


Rooftop

by FilmEater



Category: Actor RPF, British Actor RPF, Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:42:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 42,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21673147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FilmEater/pseuds/FilmEater
Summary: It started as a one-shot in my "Bits and Pieces" collection, but it keeps growing and growing and deserves its own place.A woman on a roof reading a book. A man escaping a party.
Relationships: Tom Hiddleston/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 127
Kudos: 94





	1. Get Lucky

A water bottle stood on a small metal table; a book lay unopened at its side, a mobile phone and a pencil on top. A sofa of the garden-furniture variety, water-proof cushioning and metal frame, was pushed against the thick glass barrier, and on it, sock-clad feet dangling in the air, a woman kneeled, elbows on the barrier, and watched the people on the balcony below her mingle, talk, laugh, drink. The balcony was decorated with fairy lights, the several tables had centerpieces with flowers and silvery runners that shifted shades as the light from inside the penthouse apartment changed color. Someone was having a party.

She watched them for a while, making up stories in her head about the people whose faces she couldn’t quite make out in the darkness. The tall blonde woman was breaking up with the man who was built like a football player, she decided. The dark-skinned man in the brightly colored suit was trying his luck on the man who favored colorful cocktails. They disappeared, the characters in the play in her head changing as the people below changed. No one looked up. All the better for it, or they’d think her a horrible creeper, staring down at them for what seemed like hours.

It went on and on, everything growing louder – music, talking, laughter. Must’ve been the alcohol, bringing everything up a notch. She grew weary of the show, settled on the sofa with her back to the view, and opened the book, adjusting so that the light of the string lights fell on the pages, joining the few thick candles that had been placed there by previous visitors, which she lit with the lighter a kind soul has left behind. The music faded into the background, the story in her book took over, engulfing her, taking her into a different New York, where a girl called Alma lived and tried to heal her mother’s broken heart, and bits of a book-within-a-book that made appearances throughout never failed to bring tears to her eyes.

She jumped at a bang, the book nearly dropping from her hands.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” a man said, stepping away from the door behind him, one step towards her. He had an accent that immediately made her ears twitch, her heart flutter.

“It’s okay,” she said, sitting up properly. “Running away from the party?” she asked.

He chuckled, “I am, yes. Is that okay?”

She shrugged, motioned towards the empty space on the sofa next to her, “they say it’s a free country here.”

He sat in the space she offered him, long legs stretched in front of him, fingers wrapped around a whiskey tumbler. Laid his head against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. She watched him for a few moments, fascinated by the play of lights on his features, then swallowed, took a breath and opened her book again, attempting to give him the privacy he came to seek on the roof.

Two pages later, his voice broke her concentration again, “what are you reading?” he squinted, trying to read the cover. She put her bookmark in and handed him the book. He read the title, the back cover, leafed through – “are those yours?” he turned the page, showing her a pencil-marked paragraph.

“Yes. I’m reading it again.”

“It must be really good then,” he handed it back, finger still marking the page he was looking at.

“I think so,” she looked at the page, the marked paragraph, smiled. “You picked a fitting one.”

“Did I?”

She nodded, scooted closer to the candles and motioned for him to move closer to the light, “here, read it.”

The heat from his body radiated through his shirt and suit jacket, through his shoulder pressed against hers, he held the book in one hand over her lap, long fingers holding it open to the right page, angling it towards the flickering light. She hadn’t expected him to read out loud, and nearly jumped at the first sound of his voice.

 _“If at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you feel distant, your hands sometimes hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms – if you find yourself at a loss for what to do with them, overcome with sadness that comes when you recognize the foreignness of your own body – it’s because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what’s inside and what’s outside, was so much_ less _. It’s not that we’ve forgotten the language of gestures entirely. The habit of moving our hands while we speak is left over from it. Clapping, pointing, giving the thumbs-up: all artifacts of ancient gestures. Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together. And at night, when it’s too dark to see, we find it necessary to gesture on each other’s bodies to make ourselves understood.”_

He didn’t falter even once, bringing life and voice to words she’d only heard inside her own mind, and by the time he was done she was swallowing a lump, pushing it down her throat. He took a big gulp from the tumbler in his other hand.

A string of things to say was running through her mind, each one dismissed immediately as either stupid or unimportant, but the urge to speak hadn’t left her as he handed the book back to her. “I’m Lena,” she said, settling on the most harmless thing she could say.

“Lena,” he repeated, sounding it almost exactly like she did, with the soft Russian L. “I’m Tom.” He shifted, moving away back to his previous spot on the sofa, leaving her shoulder bare and suddenly cold. “Where are you from?” he asked.

“Israel,” Lena answered.

“Really? You don’t sound Israeli.”

“What do I sound like?”

He paused, “I don’t really know, actually. Mostly American, but with a bit of a Russian accent I think.”

Lena nodded, “Yup, it haunts me in Hebrew as well.”

“What?”

“The bit of Russian accent.”

“Oh,” his mouth formed the sound, and Lena found herself staring at it for a heartbeat longer than was proper. She looked away, down his throat, to the opened top two buttons of his plain white shirt under the dark, unbuttoned, suit jacket. Stared at his chest rising and falling and got distracted by the movement of his arm, bending at the elbow, bringing the glass to his mouth again. “Can I try it?” the words were out of her mouth before her brain caught up with them to stop them.

Tom paused. Raised an eyebrow and motioned towards the glass at his lips. Lena nodded. He took a sip, switched the tumbler to his other hand and stretched it across the space between them towards her. Lena took it, took a careful sip and winced as the liquid burned its way down her throat, making him laugh.

“Shit,” she handed the glass back, reaching for her water, “that’s nasty.”

“Not a whiskey fan?”

“Yeah no,” Lena stated, making a face. He laughed again.

“Shall I pop down and get you something else?”

“Why?” she asked, and immediately after, before he got a chance to even take a breath to answer, “no, don’t.” She didn’t want him to leave.

“Okay,” Tom leaned back, put his head back to rest on the back of the sofa again, looked up at the sky. Lena failed at not staring. The string lights reflected in his eyes, the flickering candlelight throwing shadows on his face, coloring his short beard and long hair in shades of red. He looked beautiful. She looked away when he closed his eyes. Privacy. Privacy was a thing she should try and give him.

Lena picked up her book again, brought her feet on the sofa and tucked them in between cushions, and dived back in. It was harder to concentrate this time. The music from below faded a bit as the wind picked up and people went inside, closing the balcony doors behind them and trapping the sound. The city noises grew louder. Sounds of ceaseless traffic reaching even this high, the occasional car horn or police siren breaking the relative calm. The man resting at her feet was the biggest distraction, of course, but she tried not to look. She focused on the words on the page instead, a mistake, since the tears were in her eyes again, the lump in her throat.

“What’s wrong?” she must’ve sniffed or made some sort of sound. He was looking at her.

“The book.” Oh god was her voice breaking? She reached for the water, gulped it down. Tom moved closer again, reached a hand and she gave him the book. Their fingers brushed as he took over marking the page for her. His shoulder was pressed against hers again as he leaned the pages towards the light. He didn’t ask her which section was responsible, it was marked on the page, the paragraphs outlined clearly with a pencil and selected sentences underlined specifically. Blissfully, he didn’t read it out loud. She thought she might start crying if he had.

Tom finished, put her bookmark in, closed the book, handed her what was left of his whiskey, “drink up.” Lena chuckled, did as she was told. Cursed as the liquid burned. “What’s his name?” Tom asked. “Or hers,” he added.

“James.”

“Do you want to talk about it? Finish it,” Tom rested fingers under her arm, halting the downward motion of the glass moving away from her mouth.

“No,” he raised an eyebrow and Lena sighed, bringing the glass back to her mouth and taking two large gulps of fire. When it was done burning, it warmed her up from the inside, which was a blessing since her t-shirt was slowly but surely losing its ability to keep her warm.

“You sure?”

“What’s there to say about it?”

Tom shrugged, “You tell me.”

Lena took the book, leafed through it to page thirteen, and handed it to him. The quote was marked, large pencil parenthesis encircling the three lines, and a small heart drawn on the margin set it apart from all the other marked sections in the book. The one and only comment, if one could call it that. She spoke, quoting from memory –

_“and if the man who once upon a time had been a boy who promised he’d never fall in love with another girl as long as he lived kept his promise, it wasn’t because he was stubborn or even loyal. He couldn’t help it.”_

Tom closed the book, returned it to her, “you need new reading material.”

He stood up, empty glass held in the tips of his fingers, and Lena had to look up, way up, to find his face. “Stay,” she said, once again mouth working faster than brain, “I’m sorry.”

“I’ll be right back.”

She watched him go, moving gracefully, a shadow disappearing into the darkness. The bang of the door was quieter this time, he held it as it closed to mute the sound. After staring at the closed door for the length of time it took her to work herself into a panic over saying stupid things and scaring people away, she reached for the book again and started leafing through it, pausing on the various marked sentences. Making it worse, making it all worse.

His return was a surprise, and Lena hastened to rub hands against her eyes, drying them. Tom returned carrying two bottles in one hand, two wine-glasses in the other, and a fleece blanket thrown over his forearm. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” he said when he came close enough to take a look at her face, to note the book in her hands. “Put the book away, and take this,” he motioned towards the blanket. Lena did as she was told, snuggling inside the blanket as he poured wine into the tall stemmed glasses. He left the other bottle on the metal table, untouched for now. Lena studied the label. Glenfiddich. It was about a quarter full. 

“Thanks,” she took the glass he offered her, sipped the wine.

“Do you live here?” Tom asked, settling back on the sofa.

“I live in Israel.”

“What brings you here, then?”

“It was either this or Boston.”

“What’s in Boston?”

“A world of trouble,” Lena said, sipped her wine and added, “James.”

“What’s here?” Tom asked.

“Not James. A play I wanted to watch.”

He held her eyes for a breath longer than she was comfortable with, then moved onto his next question, “and this building? AirBnB or something?”

Lena shook her head, “My cousin, well, my second or third cousin, it’s complicated, she lives here. Her husband is pretty rich. They’re in San Francisco for the weekend. They let me stay. I feed the cats.”

Tom nodded as if it all made sense and she hadn’t started babbling two sips into the wine. “What floor?”

“Second. Do I also get to ask questions?”

“No,” he smiled, sipped his own wine. “First time in New York?”

“No,” Lena said. “Who is the whiskey for?”

“Me. What’s your favorite place in New York?”

“Central Park,” she drank more of the wine. “And here. Yours?”

He smiled, “Same.” The clinked their glasses together and drank.

“Favorite place in the whole world?” Lena asked.

“Home,” Tom said, drinking. “Yours?”

“The Lake District.”

“Is that so?”

Lena nodded, “haven’t been anywhere more beautiful yet.”

They carried on like this, firing questions at each other, clinking glasses and drinking together when their answers matched. Nothing too personal. Nothing too complicated. Occasionally they’d lapse into silence, listening to the music drifting up from below. Whenever he didn’t want to answer a question, Tom would just counter with one of his own. Lena always answered. He waited until she finished the first glass of wine and was halfway through the second before he asked, “what play did you come here to see?”

The glass froze in mid-air, halfway to her mouth. Tom was looking at her, his own glass dangling between two fingers. His hair was falling on his forehead, his arm thrown over the back of the sofa casually, somewhere behind her. If she leaned back it would be there, right behind her head. She hadn’t leaned back in a while, afraid. She didn’t look at him when she answered, “yours.”

The silence stretched around them, putting Lena’s nerves on edge, making her skin itch. She downed the remaining wine in her glass in one swallow and placed it on the small table, reached for the bottle of Glenfiddich, suddenly grateful for its existence. Took a swig directly from the bottle.

Tom laughed, “Relax, I knew you recognized me a while back.”

She looked at him then, gathering all the liquid courage she’d consumed to look into his eyes, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

Lena took another swig from the bottle, offered it to Tom. “How did you know?”

“You stared too long at first, and you blush,” he raised his hand and gently touched the back of his knuckles to her cheek, bottle clutched between them. “The mind can bullshit, but the skin gives the game away.” He took a swig, placed the bottle on the floor between them.

“I could be blushing just because I think you’re pretty,” Lena said.

He smiled, a wide, happy smile, “I think you’re quite drunk.”

Lena shook her head, “not yet. It’s only been…” she calculated, “two glasses of wine and a bit of whiskey.”

“Have you eaten?”

She nodded.

“When?”

Lena paused to think. She landed at four, got the apartment just over an hour later. Had an energy bar, showered and fell asleep for a few hours until the sounds of the party woke her and she went up to the roof, a place to both enjoy a bit of the city and escape it at the same time. “Around five,” she said. “An energy bar.”

“Yeah, you’re quite drunk.”

“I don’t feel drunk,” she said, reaching for the whiskey and drinking from the bottle again. She decided it was an acquired taste, it grew on her. Or maybe it just dissolved some of the fear in her stomach. “Why didn’t you leave?” Lena asked.

“When?”

“When you realized I know who you are.”

“You didn’t touch your phone,” he said, taking the bottle from her hands, drinking deeply. “You didn’t force me to interact. You let me be. And later it seemed like you needed the company.”

“Thanks.”

This new silence didn’t make her skin itch quite as much, and after another swig from the bottle, Lena leaned back against the sofa, resting her head against Tom’s arm. From below, through cracks in doors and windows, a Daft Punk song drifted up. Lena chuckled, quietly singing _we’re up all night to get Loki_.

“Don’t get weird on me now, we were having fun.”

“We’re still having fun,” Lena said. “Right?”

Tom chuckled, “Right.”

He leaned his head back and they looked up at the sky. It was clear and dark, the stars just barely visible due to light pollution, but still there. She thought she could make out Orion’s Belt, but she wasn’t sure. “Do you know the stars?” she asked.

He made a sound that could’ve been taken for anything and she continued, “That’s Orion, right?” she pointed towards the constellations.

“I think so.”

Lena scanned the sky, looking for another familiar pattern, found it. “I know that one,” she tried to remember the name in English. “ _Haduba Hagdola_. I don’t know what it’s called in English.”

“ _Haduba Hagdola_ ,” Tom repeated. “What does that mean?”

“The big bear. Female bear.”

“Ursa Major,” he said. “That’s the Latin name. It means the same.”

“Huh.”

Tom’s phone buzzed, the vibration creating a strange sound Lena couldn’t quite figure out. The man shifted, taking the phone out of his back pocket, looked at the screen, and spent the next minute typing furiously, his fingers dancing on the screen at a speed Lena couldn’t quite follow.

“Everything okay?” she asked. He nodded, not taking his eyes off the screen.

Below them, the music changed to _Despacito_. Lena smiled, taking a long swig from the whiskey, and got up, silently agreeing with the assessment that she was, in fact, quite drunk. She left the fleece blanket on the sofa and, ignoring the cold of the late night, she danced. Tom put his phone away and watched her, his gaze weighing on her more than she expected. Not _that_ drunk then. She reached a hand in his direction and he took it, and for a moment it wasn’t clear whether he’s going to pull her down or she was going to pull him up. She balanced on the balls of her feet until Tom tugged her towards him, and she fell awkwardly into his lap.

“Shit, sorry,” Lena tried to scoot off but he didn’t let her move too far, keeping her back pressed against his front, her head tucked under his chin.

“It’s fine,” he spoke into her hair.

“Why don’t you dance?”

He shrugged, the song changed, and the moment was gone. Which is why the next question shouldn’t have left Lena’s lips. “You used to dance a lot, didn’t you?”

A breath, then- “yes.”

“Why did you stop?”

“Who says I stopped?”

Lena shifted so he could see her rolling her eyes at him. Tom laughed. They settled back, now taking the entire length of the sofa, leaning against the back of it, Lena on the inside, trapped by Tom’s body, the blanket covering them both. “Life happens,” he said, once again speaking into her hair.

Lena chuckled, “tell me about it.”

“No.”

“Fair,” she almost shrugged, but the space was too tight.

His hand found hers, long fingers wrapping around her small ones, he tucked them under the blanket for warmth. “What was that quote from your book, about holding hands?”

Lena answered without thinking, “ _an average of seventy-four species become extinct every day, which was one good reason but not the only one to hold someone's hand._ ”

He made a surprised sound, “Do you remember the whole thing by heart?”

“Just some bits.”

“I meant the part I read earlier.”

“Oh,” Lena paused, “I don’t remember that one actually.”

“Something about holding hands and saying nothing together.”

“Fine, I’ll be quiet.”

She half expected Tom to say that it’s not what he meant, but he didn’t. She lay with her ear on his suit jacket, his breath tickling her head, and listened to the beat of his heart mingle with the soft sounds of music still drifting from below. Quieter now than before, the dance beats changed to something electronic and hypnotic.

Lena started, disoriented. She’d fallen asleep. She looked at her hand on a man’s shoulder. Looked at the man. Right. It came back to her in a rush and she took a deep breath. The movement woke him as well. They sat up, the blanket falling to the floor, the pre-dawn cold immediately attacking, seeping right to the bones. Tom ran fingers through his hair and rubbed his eyes. Lena undid the mess that was left of her ponytail and was about to put it back in order when Tom reached a hand and ran it through her hair. He said something but it was too quiet for her to hear.

“What?”

“Leave it?” he said a bit louder, his intonation making it half a question, but it wasn’t what he said before. His lips moved differently.

“Okay.”

Tom stood and stretched, limbs reaching high, the tail of his shirt peeking from his pants and just a bit of pale skin visible. Lena tried not to stare. She stood up, shivering, gathering her things. Phone went into the pocket of her pajama pants, nearly empty water bottle into the other pocket, creating and awkward bulge.

Warmth engulfed her as Tom put the blanket over her shoulders, “is that your bottle or are you just happy to see me?”

Lena laughed in surprise.

“Is that a pencil?” Tom asked, nodding towards the bit of it poking from behind the book on the little table. Lena nodded. “Give it here, and the book.”

He took them from her hands, smiled at the panicky look in her eyes, “don’t worry,” and turned away from her, scribbling something inside. A moment later both were returned to her. Pencil went into the same pocket as the phone, the book remained in her hands.

Tom picked up the empty bottles – when had they finished both the wine and the whiskey? – and placed them in the bin by the door to the stairwell. Lena followed him; glasses held upside down by the stems in one hand. His hand on the small of her back guided her down the stairs, they left the glasses and the blanket by the door of the penthouse, and he held her now-free hand in his as they took the elevator down to the second floor. The realization that it was over, that he’d be gone and whatever it was that happened tonight will be gone with him, was laying heavy on her, making it harder to breathe. Speaking was out of the question. What could she possibly say that would help? That wouldn’t be stupid? That would matter?

He walked her to the door of her cousin’s apartment, and when she finally gathered the courage to speak Tom shook his head slightly, nipping the thought in the bud. He was right, Lena knew. It was better this way.

“When are you watching the play?” he asked, breaking the silence.

"Tomorrow night."

He glanced at his watch, “tomorrow today, or tomorrow tomorrow?” he asked, smile twitching at the sides of his lips.

Lena chuckled, “tomorrow today.”

“Okay, have you got a good seat?”

She nodded, “yeah, it’s not bad. Back of the orchestra.”

He paused, nodded to thoughts in his own head, and said “d’you want to come backstage after for a little bit?”

Lena smiled, “that would be nice.”

“Alright. Come to the theater around half six, ask for Clara at the ticket office.”

“Half six? Six thirty you mean?” Tom nodded. “Okay.”

Another silence. Her eyes darted from the buttons of his suit, to the skin of his neck, up his stubble and beard, around the edges of his cheeks, to the curls of his hair, the creases in his brow, the slope of his nose. Eventually she dared to lock eyes with him again. The crinkles at their corners grew a bit deeper as his lips twitched in a little smile. He reached a hand, hesitated for a moment, then brushed her hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear. Lena’s throat dried.

“Good night, Lena,” Tom said, brushing the back of his knuckles down her cheeks as he lowered her hand. Lena could feel how hot they were. The skin giving her away again.

She took a breath and stepped forward, wrapping her arms around his neck. It was half a heartbeat before he wrapped arms around her middle, pulling her close, his nose in her hair.

“Goodnight Tom,” she spoke into his neck. She counted to three, then stepped back, tried for a smile and turned around, fumbling with the key until she finally managed to get it into the lock. She leaned against the door once she was inside and willed herself not to cry. It was a moment until she heard his footsteps receding down the hallway.

By sheer force of will, she waited until her teeth were brushed, an alarm was set to a few hours later and she was in bed, before she looked at what he did to her book. It was a short inscription on the title page inside, followed by his signature –

_Lena-_

_Let it go._

_-Tom._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book quoted throughout is The History of Love by Nicole Krauss.
> 
> Title song -  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NV6Rdv1a3I


	2. Enjoy the Silence

They were hiding on the rooftop, a whole bunch of them, having escaped there using the stairs, climbing up emergency ladders, scaling the walls. They were hiding on the rooftop, looking out for the horde of zombies slowly making their way down the winding city streets. Lena stood against the railing, a book in her hand, and watched them come closer and closer, panic rising.

“We should dance,” someone said behind her. “We should dance before they come.”

It was a good idea. Or rather, it seemed like a good idea under the circumstances. She turned around, watching as they all paired up, looking for someone to dance with. He walked over to her, tall and lean, the bluest eyes, light brown curls, and a reddish beard. He smiled and offered her a hand.

She had to dance practically on tip toes, he had to stoop down a bit, to compensate for their difference in heights, but he led her around the rooftop, deftly spinning them around and between the other couples, waltzing in a circle through the space.

Then they were alone, just the two of them, going on and on as the first zombies made their way over the railing and to the roof.

“This isn’t how I want to die,” she said, letting him spin her under his arm before falling into formation again, hand on his shoulder, another clasped in his.

She read her book in the park, sitting on the grass, back against a tree, listening to the sounds of people around her, trying to ignore the dancing-through-the-zombie-apocalypse dream that was still fresh in her mind. There were many things to do in New York, she was told. Several lists of suggested activities have been provided by friends and acquaintances, but Lena ignored them all, took her book, walked a few blocks until she reached Central Park, walked inside until the mass of people became a trickle, tried not to listen too closely to their conversation as her ears twitched at any mention of dreams, dancing or zombies, found her corner and sat there, reading her book in the relative sunshine.

Lena miscalculated the time it would take her to walk from the park to the theatre, so she’d arrived there fifteen minutes early. She walked around, looking at the giant posters of the cast covering the various doors leading backstage, took a photo of the sign, then crossed the street and grabbed a coffee from the Starbucks inside the hotel. She sipped it, walking slowly back.

It was a surprisingly straightforward affair to talk to the box office lady, Clara was called and showed up a minute later through one of the doors leading into the seating area.

“You must be Lena,” she smiled. Lena nodded. “Wonderful. So you’re all clear for a backstage pass after the show,” she said, “where are you sitting? Show me your ticket,” Lena fished the ticket out of her bag and presented it. Clara scanned it briefly, nodding, “alright, that’s good. So after the show come back to the bar area, I’ll wait for you there. We’ll wait for everyone to leave and then I’ll take you in. Alright?”

“Yes. Thank you,” Lena smiled, excited. This was more than she’d ever expected.

With nothing better to do, Lena settled on the set of stairs by one of the stage doors, pulled out her book and continued reading.

“Please tell me it’s a different book,” she looked up, startled, to see Tom standing over her, leash leading to a chocolate-brown dog in his hands, shadowed by a dark-skinned man a little shorter than him.

“Oh. Hi,” she said.

Tom smiled, but then his smile faltered, and his eyes darted around, noting the few people who were already loitering in the area before the show. “I’ll see you after?” he kept his voice low, quiet, a conversation for them only.

“Yeah,” she nodded. Tom winked at her briefly and took off in long strides, the man following. He nodded at those who were standing and disappeared into the theater.

“Ohmygod he talked to you!” a young girl said, eyes wide, gesturing with her hands as she came closer, “what did he say? Ohmygod!”

“He just asked about my book,” Lena said quietly.

“That’s so cool! You know I had a dream about him last night?”

“Oh?”

“Yes! We were dancing on a rooftop. I think the end of the world was coming.”

“Zombies,” someone said behind her.

“What?” the girl turned, waited as another woman took a few steps to join them.

“Zombies were coming. I had that dream also.”

“No way!”

Lena was relieved when the two moved away, discussing the dream and neglecting to ask her about it. It’s been a while, quite a while, since the last time something like this had happened. It only figures it would happen here, now, with this particular dream. She tried not to think about how many other people in the city had dreamed about dancing with Tom Hiddleston through a zombie apocalypse.

She watched the play with a lump in her throat and tears in her eyes. She hadn’t expected it to hit her in the guts quite as much as it had, but combined with the book, with her already-raw nerves, that “ _I don’t need to_ think _of you_ ,” in the beginning of the play was a punch in the gut, and she couldn’t quite shake it off for the following 90 minutes. She laughed throughout, more than she’d expected, but it was all around the same lump in her throat. It was a little surreal, being so sad and yet laughing. She wondered what James would make of the play.

_I don’t need to think of you._

The shadows on the walls behind the actors distracted her for a moment, and she regretted the photography ban. It was artwork. It should be shared with the world. It was being shared with a theatre of nearly 1000 people. Lena hoped it was enough.

The theater darkened and a moment later the audience erupted with applause. A standing ovation as the cast came out for a bow, then left and came out again. People started filtering out between the two bows, and Lena had to fight the urge to go with them. The plan, originally, before last night, had been to go to stage door after, wait for her chance to say a few words and get her playbill signed, get a few photos of the cast, maybe get one with them as well. The new plan was much better, but it made her fiddle with the edge of her shirt, made her stomach flop. What was she going to say? Why did he even offer?

Lena found Clara standing by the bar, and once the stream of people leaving the theater thinned to a trickle, followed her down the aisle, through a curtain at the side of the room, and through a closed door. Just like that, they were backstage.

“Wait here, he’s gonna be a few minutes,” the older woman said and disappeared, leaving Lena in a tight hallway, standing awkwardly, heart hammering in the cage of her ribs, threatening to burst right out. She wondered if anyone else could hear it.

A door opened and a man walked out, Lena nearly jumped in surprise, “hi,” she said.

“Oh. Hi,” he answered, looking a bit confused. “Are you lost?”

Lena shook her head, “No, I was told to wait here. I loved your part, by the way.”

He smiled, “thank you!”

“I’m Lena,” she reached her hand out.

“Eddie,” he shook hers, briefly. “Thanks for coming.”

“Oh, my pleasure. It was amazing. The staging and the lights were… so beautiful,” Lena said, “like artwork.”

“Yes, the light director is a genius. He won an award for the previous show he worked on,” Eddie said.

“He should get all the awards for this one.”

Soft laughter to her side made her turn her head, and there was Tom walking the short few steps from a door down the hallway he’d left open. “I see you’ve met Eddie already,” he smiled, walking up beside her.

“Yeah,” Lena nodded. “Hi again,” she smiled up at him.

“Hi again,” he looked much more relaxed now than he had earlier that day as he was walking in. “Do you want to meet everyone else?” she nodded.

Rather than taking her around the dressing rooms, he took her back to his and texted something on his phone. “Sorry, I don’t have much to offer,” he said, motioning around the small space. There was a bottle of water, a small espresso machine, a packet of chocolates and a lot of little things lying around, giving the room character. The dog was lying under the table, watching them. “Sit,” he motioned towards the only chair in the room and half-sat on the windowsill, which was just high enough to make it actually seem comfortable.

“So what did you think?” he asked.

Lena tilted her head, confused.

“About the play,” Tom clarified.

“Oh, um,” a hand through her hair, tucking stray strands behind her ear, “well I feel like I’ve just cried for 90 minutes,” she half-shrugged, not sure if this is something she should actually be apologizing for or not. It was meant as a compliment.

“It’s a difficult play,” he said.

Air left her lungs in not-quite a chuckle, “yeah, you could say that. It was very good. I think I’ll need to watch it again. I feel like I’d missed things.” He nodded, as if it made sense, although she wasn’t quite sure that it has.

She didn’t get an opportunity to say anything else because Zawe walked into the room, changed from her blue blouse and jeans to a simple dress and sandals, and a moment later Charlie joined them. It looked like he hasn’t actually changed his clothes, just took the grey jacket off. A short round of introductions and a brief conversation ensued, one which Lena had no memory of the moment it had ended, because it was all gone in the fog of the sheer excitement and surrealism of the situation. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined she’d be backstage on a Broadway show. Especially not this show, with these people. At some point she managed to gather enough courage to ask for a photo. It felt wrong, using the moment like that, but she worried her memory would betray her. A photo didn’t seem like too much to ask. It seemed like they felt the same, and a moment later they were all smiling up into her phone, held in Tom’s hand as he took the photo. Then they were gone.

A minute later the volume of the street outside rose with excited screams as, Lena imagined, they walked outside to sign autographs at stage door.

“Thanks for this,” Lena turned to Tom, who stood behind her, texting. He shut off the screen and put the phone in his back pocket.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

“No, really, I had a really nice time… last night and now and…” she took a breath, trying to figure out what is it she wanted to say. Time was running out, again, and she had things to say. So many things to say. Some of them were important. Most of them were not. If she left this room right now and never got to speak to him again, what was the thing she needed to say the most? “I don’t… I didn’t…” the _deserve it_ didn’t form on her tongue, but it pressed behind her eyes, making them water.

He watched her, blue eyes focused on her face, slightly amused smile at the corners of his mouth, “it’s okay,” he said, as if he knew what she tried to say. But he didn’t, he couldn’t, because she herself didn’t know.

Lena took another breath, breaking eye contact and digging into her bag. She didn’t have the words, or rather, she had too many words, in several languages, and no idea which ones to choose, which ones would suit better. But she had a book. She pulled it out of her bag and gave it to him. “Here, keep this.”

“You’re not done reading,” Tom said, but reached out for it, their fingers brushing as he took it out of her hands. He flipped it open on the first page, raised an eyebrow at his note inside, turned it towards her.

“Oh shit,” she half-laughed, half-choked, taking it back immediately. “Sorry. I’ll get you another. Can I bring you another tomorrow?” he nodded, that damned smile still playing at the corner of his lips.

“Relax, Lena,” he said.

“I can’t. I have… I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” he walked back, leaning against the windowsill again and motioned for her to join him.

“I want to,” she said, settling by his side, pressed against him in the tight space. The room really wasn’t big at all, she noted. It felt smaller with his feet sprawled in front of him, it almost seemed like they were reaching halfway to the door.

“Go on then, I’ve got all the time in the world,” it was a lie. She knew it was a lie because she could hear his next commitment waiting on the street below, just outside the window.

“Thank you,” Lena said again.

“You’ve said that” he smiled, bumping her with his shoulder. “What else?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged.

“Come on…”

“Don’t pressure me!” she laughed, bumping against him in a similar gesture. “Why did you invite me here?” she asked. “Do you do that a lot?”

“I don’t know,” Tom said. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. And no.”

“Oh,” she swallowed, wrapped her arms around her middle, “do you regret it?”

“Not at all. Should I?”

“I hope not.”

There was a short pause, Lena tried to think what else to say, when Tom said, “I thought about you this morning.”

“Oh?” what was she supposed to say to that? _Me too_ flashed through her mind, but she swallowed it down.

“I think I dreamed about you,” he added. “Dancing on the rooftop while the world was ending,” he half-chuckled.

“Zombies,” Lena mumbled. He heard.

“Yes, how did you know?” when she didn’t answer, he kept talking, “d’you know what’s odd, though? Several people told me they had a similar dream. They were dancing we _me_ while the zombies were coming. Even Charlie. But I was dancing with _you_.”

Lena nodded. It made sense. It was a weird, twisted sense that only applied to her dreams, but it made sense. Everyone else were put in her own shoes, having shared her dream. Except for him, because he had an active role. Or maybe it made no sense at all. Having her dreams be thrust on other people made no sense at all. It still happened, though. She hated it.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Who did you dance with?” he asked.

“You,” Lena shrugged. Who else? It seemed like all of Manhattan spent the early morning hours dancing with Tom Hiddleston in their dreams. All of Manhattan minus one Tom Hiddleston, who spent _his_ dream dancing with her.

“So you got your dance after all,” he smiled, putting a hand on her thigh and pushing against her as he straightened up into a proper standing position. “That’s great.”

There it was. The end. He was standing up to go, continue his evening plans and commitments without her. Which was fair, which was his life, his right. She got way more than she’d bargained for in the last two days. And yet, she didn’t want it to end.

“Do you want to do something later?” she blurted out at his back.

He turned, “like what?”

“I don’t know. Hang out. Talk. Listen to music. Dance on the roof even if the zombies aren’t coming?” she tried for the joke, realizing she really didn’t have a good answer. She didn’t care what to do with him, she just wanted to do _something_. Something to make this not the end of it all.

He chuckled, “yeah, alright. I’ll bring something to drink. Same roof, I assume?”

Lena nodded. “When?” she asked.

“Well I need to do stage door, then get Bobby back home,” the dog perked up at the sound of his name. “Maybe an hour and a half from now?”

“Okay,” she smiled. “I guess I’ll see you then.”

“I guess you will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title song  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpD5695Kfis


	3. Sirens

It was hard to make out the stars in the sky, but at eye-level and below, the city glittered with the multitude of lights coming out of windows, shining from billboards, pooling around streetlights and lighting the way in front of vehicles. Every once in a while, the street would be cast in a fading-in-and-out shade of blue as a police car cruised by. Lena watched the moving cars, small like toys, and the tiny people rushing up and down the street. Watched and wondered whether he’d show. Why would he show? Why had she even asked him to come? Why had he said yes? It didn’t make sense, not really. They didn’t know each other. He had no reason to show. She had no reason to stand, shivering on a roof, and wishing for him to show. And yet.

And yet, he had stayed on the roof with her last night, instead of going back to the party or going home. And yet, he’d invited her backstage after his show. And yet, he said he’d come. And yet there she was, waiting and shivering. Like the idiot that she was.

A figure turned into the entrance of the building and Lena’s breath caught for a moment. Could it be?

Lena had caught the end of the stage door when she left the theatre earlier that night, took a few photos of Tom signing autographs, stood for a minute, not really knowing what to do with herself, wondering if he’d notice her. He didn’t. Or if he did, he made no indication of it before he turned away and walked back inside the theatre. She decided to walk back to her cousin’s. It was usually a thirty-minute walk. She put her earphones in, turned on her music, and was there in twenty-three.

Her hair was still damp from her shower, and Lena could almost hear her mother’s voice, going on and on about wet hair and cold air and getting sick. She concentrated on the city to ignore the nagging. It was almost time, and she was getting more and more nervous. He wouldn’t come. Why would he come? What would she do if he came? What could she possibly say? What was she thinking, inviting him? What would he think of her?

The drag of the door opening behind her stopped her spiraling mind. Lena turned and there he was. His hair blowing a bit in the breeze, a bottle in on hand, the other pushing the door open. Tom smiled when he saw her, letting the door close with a bang behind him. They both flinched at the deafening noise.

“Shit, I forgot it does that,” he walked a few steps towards her.

“Hi again,” Lena said, closing the distance between them.

“I brought wine,” he lifted the bottle in his hand, as if she needed proof of the statement. “Shall we?” Tom nodded towards the sofa.

Lena nodded, half-turned, then paused, “I’m an idiot.”

He half-laughed, “Why?”

“I didn’t think to bring glasses.”

“Oh.”

“Do you want to just…” she motioned towards the door back into the building.

“I could wait while you bring glasses?” Tom offered.

Lena watched him for a moment, chewing on her bottom lip. Suddenly, the last thing she wanted was to be on the roof with him. It was growing cold, and she was sure, down to the marrow of her bones, that spending more time with Tom here would ruin the memory of the previous night. Lena wanted to keep that magic alive. It shouldn’t be tainted with doubt and her inevitable stupidness. This could happen elsewhere. Downstairs. Inside. Where she was warm, at least.

“I’m cold,” she said, walking towards the door, “and I’m hungry,” she’d forgotten to eat again. A bad habit. She pulled on the door with both hands, putting her entire body’s weight to get it to open, then stood leaning against it to keep it open. “Come downstairs with me where it’s warm and there’s food. And wine glasses.” She paused, seeing that he wasn’t entirely convinced. “Look, I promise I won’t touch you inappropriately or anything, ok?”

Tom laughed then, and she knew she had him.

She called the elevator once they were both inside, and he led her in, a hand on the small of her back, leaning down as the doors closed and speaking into her ear, “What if I’d like to be touched inappropriately?”

Lena almost choked and could immediately feel her face flushing. She looked up at him, his eyes sparkling, tongue peeking out slightly between his teeth, grinning. “Well,” she said, considering her response. Anything from _just say when and where_ _to what the fuck?_ raced through her mind, but she settled on trying to be clever.

“You know what they say,” she said. He raised an eyebrow, nodding for her to continue, “you can’t always get what you want.”

Tom sighed deeply, “Oh well. Maybe another time,” the elevator door opened, and he waited for her to step out, then followed. “You mentioned food?”

She made them tea and sandwiches, which they at standing around the kitchen counter, discussing the merits of a good cup of tea and the strange existence of people who put in the milk first. It was an odd evening. They talked. They talked a lot. It was a strange kind of talking, with Tom asking a lot of questions but answering very little. It felt natural, though. They’d moved to the living-room sofa, tea now turned to wine, put on some music and continued to talk.

“What was it like, going to boarding school?” Lena asked. Boarding schools were the places where problematic children, or children from problematic families, were sent to. At least where she came from. Unless it was a military school, those were usually fairly good. It was rare to send children to boarding school back home. “Did you ever feel like your parents didn’t love you?”

Tom blinked, “why?”

“They sent you away.”

“It’s not like that,” he explained. “I felt like they loved me very much. I went to the best school in the country.”

“Do you ever wonder who you’d be if you didn’t go?” Lena asked.

“Sometimes,” he sipped his wine.

Half a bottle of wine later, they’ve gotten into a game of “wait, do you know/remember/love this song?” Lena’s laptop was used as the medium, and after a bit of fumbling they’ve fallen into a rhythm of one song from him, one song from her. Pearl Jam’s “Sirens” was playing in the background. Tom’s choice. Lena was already calculating her next move, wondering which song would be a good choice to follow this.

_It’s a fragile thing, this life we lead, if I think too much I can get over-whelmed by the grace by which we live our lives with death over our shoulders_

“I love that part,” Lena whispered, afraid to speak louder and ruin the moment.

“Me too,” Tom topped off their glasses, the bottle of wine nearly over.

They sang it together, two whispering voices in the dim room, when the verse repeated again after the guitar solo. It was the end of the song that helped her decide her own choice for the next song. She started it as soon as Sirens ended, and said, “after this one we need to switch to something happy, okay?”

Tom nodded, “sounds good.”

They bobbed their heads to the music, sipping the wine. “I like this one,” Tom said. “Who’s it by?”

“Blue October,” she answered.

Lena wasn’t quite sure how they ended up in the guest room, sitting on top of the covers of the opened sofa-bed she’d been sleeping in, playing cards. The bottle of wine had long since been consumed, and they each held a mug full of slowly cooling tea in one hand and a bunch of cards in the other. Lena was trying to teach him to play _Durak_ , which was proving problematic due to a combination of both being quite drunk, and having only a vague memory of the rules herself. Much to Tom’s amusement, she ended up having to look up the game online.

“D’you want to up the stakes a bit?” Tom asked.

“What do mean?”

“Strip.”

“Strip- _Durak_?” Lena clarified, trying to wrap her head around the concept. At some point, many years ago back in high-school, this probably already happened. But it was strange to imagine it now.

“mmhmm,” Tom nodded.

“Bad idea,” she said.

“Why? I think it’s an excellent idea.”

“I promised not to touch you inappropriately, didn’t I?” Lena said, “It’s not fair to tempt me with your nakedness.”

He laughed. She has discovered, as the night progressed, that making him laugh made her all sorts of happy. “You’re making assumptions about your ability to win this,” he said.

“I’ve literally been playing this game since I was a child.”

“Well then, you’ll have to exercise some self-control, woman,” he grinned, “or break your word,” his tongue peeked between his teeth briefly, “and we can’t have that.”

“We can’t have that” Lena agreed.

It was evident that she has, in fact, underestimated his card-playing abilities. A few games later she was barefoot, and in her tank-top, having lost both socks and shirt. Tom, the clever bastard, had lost more games, but had more articles of clothing to remove. He’d lost both socks, his belt and his watch, although the validity of the watch removal caused an unexpectedly lengthy debate by the end of which they weren’t really into playing the game anymore.

He yawned, causing her to do the same. His yawn caused her such a moment of panic that she spoke before her mind could catch up with the words, “don’t go.”

Tom tilted his head, blue eyes surprisingly clear despite the wine and the time, “no?” he asked.

“Sleep here,” she motioned towards the sofa bed they were on. “My promise still stands.”

“I take my clothes off for sleeping,” he was half-teasing, half serious.

Lena paused, tried to make her eyes go as wide as they can, “for real?” he laughed again, the sound melting the panicky boulder in her stomach. “Just sleep here,” she said again.

The moment of silence that followed was the longest in Lena’s life, and she was on the verge of regretting every decision she’d made since she got on the plane to New York, but then he said “alright.”

She removed the bed-cover while he was in the bathroom, walked barefoot to the kitchen to put away the mugs, turned off the lights around the apartment, leaving only the bedside lamp in the guest room. Then they switched, and as Lena brushed her teeth, she wondered what he was doing, what he was thinking. Her own ability to properly process thought had long since flown out the window, or jumped off the roof, but it seemed to be working in her favour so far. Perhaps thinking wasn’t actually a good thing. She changed into the oversized t-shirt and shorts she used as pyjamas, trying not to think.

His jeans and shirt were folded neatly on the back of a chair, his grey shoes placed underneath it, black socks tucked inside. Tom himself was under the covers, lying on the inside of the bed, by the wall, watching the door and now her. Lena paused in the doorway, but then took a breath, put her pile of clothes on the chair, and climbed under the covers he lifted for her. She turned off the lamp, then turned on her other side to face him in the darkened room. It took some time for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, for the room to go from almost entirely black, to various shades of grey, illuminated by the yellowish light filtering in through the curtained window.

Tom was watching her, his eyes reflecting some of that light. His eyes lay heavy on her, but she couldn’t turn away.

“Do you ever get lonely?” she whispered.

“I’m human,” he said, shrugging.

“What do you do when you get lonely?” for a moment, she thought her voice was going to break. How could it be, that she was so physically close to another person, she could reach out and touch him, yet feel so utterly, helplessly, completely alone.

“It varies,” his voice was as quiet as hers, a raspy melody filling the darkness. “Sometimes I go for a run, sometimes I call a friend, sometimes I listen to music or read or watch something. Sometimes I stay the night with strange women I’d just met,” she could feel his smile more than she could see it. He moved his hand, placing it palm-up between their heads. Lena stared at it, studying the long fingers curving right in front of her nose, then she moved her own hand, wrapped her small fingers around his thumb. His hand closed over hers, warm and smooth and soothing.

The beach was dark but not pitch-dark. An invisible moon shed enough light to make out the oncoming waves on one side, the sand underneath her feet, and the path on the other side. She could see him in the distance, walking just in front of her, tall, beanie hat, leather jacket. She would recognise him anywhere. Anytime. Always. She ran to catch up. On her right, the waves were coming in closer. She caught up with him, put a hand on his arm to get his attention.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said when he saw her. The sight of him took her breath away, just for a moment.

“James, come on,” she said, trying to pull him off the sand and onto the path. The water was coming closer. The waves growing bigger. Their shoes were already getting wet. “We gotta get out of here.”

“Leave me alone,” he shrugged her hand off, kept walking, his long strides putting distance between them. It took him three steps to be almost out of sight. Lena ran to catch up, wading through ankle-deep water now.

“James, the water’s coming,” she was on his other side now, pulling him towards the higher ground on their left.

“I don’t care,” he said, sitting down, reaching for a cigarette. The water came to his chest when he sat, and the waves just kept coming. Lena looked at him, looked at gigantic waves coming closer and closer, looked behind her but the path was gone, now there were cliffs behind her. She shook her head, then set down next to him. She clutched the edge of his coat in her hands and watched the building-sized wave hurtling towards them.

She started awake, making a sound somewhere between a gasp and a whimper, “Lena,” a hand was rubbing her shoulder. She followed it to the source. Tom, eyes open, watching her. She’s had a nightmare. Oh god. “You had a nightmare,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Of course she’d have a nightmare when he’s there. Of course she’d have a nightmare now. About James, of all people. Why couldn’t this be one of the many, many nights when she dreamed nothing at all? Why did she have to start dreaming again when _he_ was near?

“I had one too, actually,” he said. “I was drowning. Me and this other guy. James?” he asked, not sure of the name. “Wasn’t that the name of the guy you mentioned yesterday?”

Lena nodded, “yes.”

“How odd. What was your nightmare about?” she knew what he was doing. Talking about it, talking about anything, putting yourself apart from the dream would make it easier to fall back to sleep and not back into the same dream.

She didn’t have neither the will nor the energy to lie to him, “I was on a beach,” she said, “and I saw James. The waves were coming in and I tried to get him to leave but he wouldn’t, and he kept going away and the water was getting higher and he wouldn’t go. Then there was nowhere else to go. So we sat and I watched the waves come to drown us.”

“How are we having the same dream?” Tom asked.

“I don’t know,” Lena said, “it just something that happens when I dream. Half the city probably dreamed about drowning with James tonight.”

He made a sound, a surprised hum deep in his chest, then asked, “do you also get other people’s dreams?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Shame,” he said. When the silence stretched and Lena was sure she was about to start crying, he spoke again, “what did he do, to haunt your dreams like that?”

“He didn’t do anything,” Lena said, blinking the tears away. Tom waited, blinking slowly but then focusing on her in the darkness again. “He said he’d marry me, once,” she added, looking away from his eyes, focusing on the stubble on his cheek instead. “And another time he said that, to him, I was perfect.” She blinked but this time the tear rolled down her cheek rather than melting away. “He said I could get any guy I want, that bastard.” She half-laughed, half-cried.

“You could,” Tom said.

“Don’t you dare,” she warned him. She rubbed at her wet cheek. Angry at her tears. Angry at herself, at James, at everything. “He said a lot of things to me,” she said. “But then he married someone else.”

He whistled, “fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“Forget him, Lena. You deserve better.”

“You don’t know that. You know nothing about me.”

“Maybe not,” he conceded.

Lena turned around, away from him. She was afraid that if she kept seeing him look at her, she’d start properly crying and never be able to stop. This isn’t how she wanted to spend the rest of her night. She took a couple of deep breaths, sniffing to clear her airways, then spoke into the darkness, “Tom?”

“Hmm?”

“Can I have your hand back?”

It was half a second before she felt the bed shift as he moved closer to put his arm around her. Lena wrapped her fingers around his thumb again and tucked their entwined hands under her chin. She could feel his breath ruffling her hair. “You smell nice,” he mumbled.

The day dawned grey and rainy, Lena listened to the light drizzle, afraid to move and wake Tom. She lay still for as long as she could, thanking all the gods that she had no more dreams that night, but eventually the need to go to the bathroom won, and she scooted from under Tom’s arm and got out of the bed. He was still asleep when she returned. She watched him. In the light of morning, he was the most beautiful thing she’d seen in her entire life. She reached and ran the tip of her finger down the bridge of his nose, barely touching, and up again to his eyebrow. He blinked awake, bleary eyed.

“Hi,” Lena said.

“Hi,” his voice was hoarse, and he coughed, clearing his throat. “What time is it?”

“Early,” she said.

“I should probably get home,” Tom said, he looked at her hand, still hovering over his face, reached up and took it in his, bringing it down to rest on his chest.

“Probably,” she agreed, although what she wanted to say was don’t go. She couldn’t keep him with her forever. She couldn’t keep him with her at all.

“How long are you in town for?” he asked.

“I’m going to Seattle tomorrow afternoon,” she said.

“Seattle?”

“Yeah, there’s a convention from work that I need to be at. I’m just here on my layover. I’ll be in Seattle next week and flying back home on Thursday.”

“Oh,” he said.

Lena sat up on the bed, pushing against him for balance, then stood up. “Coffee?” she offered.

He nodded but looked distracted. “What?” Lena asked.

“I didn’t even get to kiss you.”

She stared at him, chewing on her bottom lip. He was lying in her bed, practically naked, looking at her with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. She kept her promise. And now he goes and says something like that to her. She took a breath, kneeled on the bed, balanced with a hand on the side of his hand and pressed her lips to his. His hand found the back of her head immediately and he deepened the simple kiss she planned on. It didn’t last long, a few heartbeats. A few moments where the world was reduced to just him and her and the parts of their bodies that were touching each other. Then it was over and she moved away.

“Better?” she couldn’t help but ask.

“Much,” he smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Blue October song mentioned is called "Fear".  
> Title song:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jZBwyG7HPs


	4. Chasing Cars

It was hard to be comfortable with the laptop on the small kitchen table, sitting on the backless wooden stool, trying to maneuver the mouse in one hand and sip from a mug of tea in the other. It was hard, but Lena was determined. She was sorting through emails, cursing under her breath, when Tom walked in behind her.

“What’s going on?” he asked, looking over her shoulder at the two calendars she had opened in parallel on the small screen.

“Work,” Lena said.

“It’s Saturday.”

Lena shrugged, “that’s never stopped anyone before. Coffee machine’s over there,” she pointed towards a small Nespresso machine at the end of the counter, “I can’t make it work. Water’s still hot if you prefer tea.” She put her own tea mug aside, typing rapidly, “Sorry,” she said, looking away from the screen briefly, “this is urgent. Make yourself at home,” She gestured vaguely around the kitchen. She set two more meetings and cleared away a few more emails as Tom made himself a cup of coffee. Another email made her curse again, and her typing in reply became faster, the clinking noise of the tips of her nails hitting the keys louder.

“You sound frustrated,” Tom commented, “but oddly sexy. What’s that you’re saying?”

Lena’s mouth snapped shut, and she took a moment to playback the string of words that’s been coming out of her mouth. It was a relief they were all in a language he didn’t understand. “Cursing, mostly,” she said.

“I figured,” he raised his mug, filled with a double espresso yet still mostly empty. A salute. “Don’t stop on my account.”

“Sorry,” she said again. “It’s just that it looks,” she clicked away, shaking her head, “like some people get up in the morning with the sole purpose of getting on my nerves.” She paused, rereading the email she’d composed to make sure that her conversation hadn’t slipped into the text. It had. She cursed again and fixed the mistake, scanned the text once more and hit send. She closed the laptop, pushing it away. She’ll deal with the rest a bit later.

“You never said what you do,” Tom said.

“You never asked,” she smiled. “I’m an executive assistant,” she took a sip from her tea, “I support two executives and a team of fifty people.” Another sip, “one of my execs is in Seattle right now, the other one is back home in Israel, so I’ve got some… challenges getting their schedules aligned for some meetings.”

“Sounds… exhausting,” he observed. Lena just nodded. It was an accurate observation. She felt like she hadn’t slept in a year. Jetlag and nightmares didn’t help.

They chatted for as long as the coffee lasted, and whether it was through the haze of terrible sleep, a vague hangover or just an utter disregard of consequences, Lena reminded Tom that she planned to watch the play again that day, and asked if she could drop in, before or after, to give him the book like she’d said.

“Will you come in the evening or the matinee?”

“Matinee,” Lena said. “I’ve got Moulin Rouge in the evening.”

“Oh! I hear it’s great!”

“I can’t wait,” she admitted.

He was gone once the coffee was finished, instructing her to come to the ticket office and pick up a ticket he’d leave for her. Lena was left alone in the apartment, with her emails, the book, and the leftover sense of abandonment and despair that haunted her from her nightmare. It was terrible form, talking about your ex to another man. And now she’d done it not once but twice, and worse than that, she’d dreamed of it. Made Tom dream of it. Made god knows how many people dream of it as well. She wondered if there was anyone in Manhattan who actually knew James, who would recognise him in the dream. She wondered whether it mattered if there was.

Lena spent another half hour clearing up the rest of her inbox, texting with the manager that was awake to confirm some details and close some loops, then she had another cup of tea, this time accompanied by some food, and forced herself to dress and go outside. Thoughts of going to one of the many museums were discarded. Instead, she took the subway down several stops, and went to the Strand bookstore. If she had to kill a few hours, there was no better place than an enormous bookstore. Especially when she was on the hunt for a book.

It was an easy task to kill time until lunch at the bookstore. The only problem was that she ended up having to purchase a bag to carry all the books, and now she was stuck carrying them all around with her for the day. Lunch was a solo affair taken in a random café, where she sat scrolling mechanically through her phone as she chewed on her food. Then she decided it was a good idea to walk 30 blocks to the theatre. In hindsight, Lena thought as she sat down again on the stairs by the stage door after she’d picked up her ticket, it wasn’t her best idea ever.

The book ended like it always had, with a bit of hope and a bit of heartbreak, the echoes of all the bits she’d marked over the years still bouncing around in her mind. Lena went to the Starbucks across the street to clear her head and get another drink, texting on the way there, texting as she waited in line and texting as she waited for her order to be prepared. Each vibration of an incoming message grated on her nerves and she was glad when her drink arrived, and she had a valid excuse not to text anymore. When she returned to the theatre, a line has already begun to form, and she joined it.

Tom left her an excellent ticket, in the middle of the orchestra, just a few rows back from the stage. Lena wasn’t quite sure what to think about him getting her a free, premium ticket. She’d decided her best course of action was not to think about it too much. It was his choice, his business, his salary. She would’ve paid for her ticket, sat further back, been perfectly happy.

It wasn’t easier the second time around. In fact, now that she knew where the story was going, now that she had more context, it was actually harder. Lena cried less, but her heart hurt more. By the end of the show, it was almost physically hard to breathe. She was glad when it was over. It was torture. Beautiful, perfectly acted, perfectly lit, perfectly staged torture. And she was an absolute masochist. Never again, though. Twice was enough.

She found Scott, Tom’s bodyguard, at the back of the theatre, and this time it was he who let her through backstage and into Tom’s dressing room.

“As promised,” Lena said, producing the book out of the tote bag.

“Thank you,” Tom put it on the table, near his phone. “What else have you got?”

She took out all the other books to show him, “I shouldn’t be left unsupervised in bookstores,” she admitted.

Tom laughed, “I don’t see the problem,” he picked up a book out of her pile, “this is a really good one.”

“I guess that’s what I’m starting on the flight tomorrow.”

It was almost imperceptive, the little twitch at the corner of his eye at the mention of her flight, the barest hunch of his shoulders. Almost, but Lena caught it. It scared the shit out of her. It was too close to the brief pangs of grief she felt whenever she thought about it.

“Scott is going to bring us all some pizza for lunch, do you want to stay?” Tom asked.

“Yeah okay,” Lena agreed, although her stomach was too tied up in knots to eat.

“Listen,” Tom turned, digging through his backpack and comping up with a piece of paper, printed on both sides. “I’m sorry,” he handed her the paper, “I got an earful yesterday from my publicist. Could you sign this please?” Lena scanned the title, _Non-Disclosure Agreement_. She raised an eyebrow, looking at him, “it’s to protect us, both of us. I’ve already signed, and my firm as well.”

She read the page carefully, first one side, then the remaining on the other side. It wasn’t long and it was quite simple, and it was, in fact, phrased in a way that protected her information as much as Tom’s. Her name, her entire existence really, was not to be mentioned without her express approval. This was what “no comment” looked like in a written agreement. At the bottom of the page she could see his signature in blue pen, and a line waiting for her signature. It was a ridiculous thought that ran through her mind as she took the pen he offered her – _I am not an authorised signatory for the company_. Except this wasn’t a company contract. At least not _her_ company contract.

“I put our photo on Instagram,” Lena said. “The one from last night. How does that work now? do I need to take it down? I’m not sure it’ll help.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Okay,” she signed the paper on the empty line. “Do I also get a copy?”

“Oh yes, sorry, yes of course,” he dug through his bag and pulled out an identical paper, signed near his name and gave it to her. “That’s your copy.” She scanned the paper, comparing it to the one she’d already signed, then signed by her name and folded it into her bag.

“Well, that wasn’t awkward at all,” Lena said.

“I’m so sorry,” Tom ran fingers through his hair, shoved his hands in his pockets, making his shoulders stand out a bit.

“It’s fine. It makes sense. I don’t mind,” Lena’s eyes lit up as a thought occurred to her, but she didn’t voice it. Not yet. It was an exciting prospect, but the disappointment if it didn’t go quite as she’d expected was too much for her to handle right now. Best not to go there yet.

They ate pizza in the “guest room”, as Tom referred to it, a dressing room right next to his that was set up with a sofa rather than a chair and hanging space for his outfit. Charlie went away to spend some time with his family, but Zawe, Eddie and Scott joined them and they all crowded the space, eating with their hands, passing around mismatched glasses of Coca Cola and colourful napkins, telling stories and laughing.

A bit later, Bobby was chewing a toy under the table while Tom was reading from his brand new copy of The History of Love, out loud, with Lena listening, head against his shoulder.

“You could make a career out of this,” she said when he finished a paragraph.

“What? Audiobooks?” his body shook with quiet laughter.

Lena shrugged, “just talking, really. I think I’m falling sleep.”

His laughter formed a sound, not just movement, as he put the book away, “Is that meant to be a compliment or an insult?”

“Whatever you want,” she said, “it’s not actually meant to be anything.”

He offered her the book, “I think it’s your turn to read.”

She looked at the book in his hand like it was a snake and not her favourite piece of literature, “out loud?”

“Yes, out loud,” he rolled his eyes, putting the book in her hand and scooting down, rearranging himself on the small sofa so that his head was on her lap, his feet dangling over the armrest. Bobby perked up, dropped his toy and climbed up on the sofa and on Tom’s chest.

“No,” Lena said. “Absolutely not.”

“Why not?” blue eyes looking up at her, long fingers scratching behind the dog’s ears.

“Because. Because I’m not good at reading out loud in English. I don’t know how half of those words actually sound!”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Okay, not _half_ the words.”

“Read to me in another language, then,” Tom said, “you know a few, don’t you?”

Lena nodded slowly, hesitating. She reached for her phone and googled, opened the page. Someone had posted the entire first chapter of the book’s Hebrew translation online. Hebrew was better. Hebrew was easy and native and he wouldn’t understand a single word she said. She started reading. She scrolled on and on, reading quietly. And when she reached the quote from page 13, although there were no pages there, and she wasn’t sure it would still be on page 13 in Hebrew, her voice almost didn’t shake. It hitched only a little.

“You know I’m not sure about the English version, but this translation is starting to grow on me,” Tom said. Lena chuckled, reaching for her bottle of water, her throat dry from all the talking.

“I have it at home in Hebrew as well,” she said, “it’s yours if you want it.”

He shook his head, sitting up and letting Bobby back on the floor, “it’s not fun if you’re not reading it.”

“I’m sure we could arrange something if you’re into that sort of thing,” Lena smiled.

He looked at her from the corner of his eye, the skin there wrinkled with laughter, his lips twitching upwards, “I’m into all sorts of things.”

“Oh?” she asked. “Care to elaborate?”

He opened his mouth as if to answer then shook his head.

“Oh come on, what’s the point of signing that contract then?”

Tom laughed, “mostly to get Luke off my back,” he admitted. “But it has other benefits.”

Lena raised an eyebrow, “care to elaborate?”

“How long does Moulin Rouge run?” that was an unexpected change in subject.

“Two and a half hours. Why?”

“So ends around half ten then?” she nodded. “Any plans for later?”

“No…”

He smiled, “want to play some more strip- _Durak_?”

Lena laughed, “alright, sure.”

“Perfect, I should be leaving here around the time your play ends, so we could get you with the car on the way. I’ll text you.”

Tom watched her, looking expectedly. It took her a moment to catch up with the conversation, to realise what he’s waiting for. “You don’t have my number.”

He handed her his phone, unlocked and set to the dialer, “if you don’t mind?”

Lena laughed, “smooth, very smooth,” she took the phone and tapped in her number, rang and hung up after a moment, just long enough to make sure the number stayed in the phone memory.

“I thought so,” he said. “Do you have WhatsApp?” Lena nodded. A few seconds later her phone beeped with an incoming message – she looked at it, a smiley face from a +44 number. She created a new contact, thinking that her weekend in New York was shaping up to be like nothing she’d ever planned on or thought of. Not even close. As she left the Jacobs Theatre a bit later, going for a walk to stretch her legs before going into the theatre across the avenue for Moulin Rouge, she realised she was glad, not just glad, downright _relieved_ , that she didn’t end up going to Boston. What a sad trip it would have been then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title song  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GemKqzILV4w


	5. Fear

Lena huddled in her coat, grinning at her phone like an absolute idiot, humming _Shut Up and Dance with Me_ , and waited for her ride. She stepped away from the theatre entrance to wait, walking past the stage door and settling just after it. People were passing by, on their way to and from wherever. Some were standing, scattered around, waiting for their own rides. A car pulled up and a couple got in, then it drove away. Lena looked at her phone again: _leaving now, ETA 2min. Scott driving._ They were literally across the avenue. It would’ve been faster for Lena to walk over there and get in the car there, but there would be too many people to see, too many questions to avoid answering. This way, it was only them. So she waited, watching out for a car with a driver she recognised.

It arrived, a big black SUV, inconspicuous only for the fact there were plenty of them driving people around this city. It wasn’t a typical Uber, though, not even close. The driver’s window rolled down halfway and Scott smiled, motioning hello with his hand and nodding for her to get in the back. Lena got in as fast as she could, glad that nobody paid her any attention.

Tom was inside, holding Bobby on his lap to make sure the dog didn’t dart out the open door.

“Hey,” he smiled at her.

“Hi,” Lena smiled. “Hi Scott,” she said to the driver.

He nodded to her through the rear-view mirror, already pulling away from the sidewalk, “buckle up.”

Tom let Bobby go, and the dog ran across them both excitedly going between one and the other for pets, eventually settling on the seat between them. Lena rested her hand on his neck, her fingers scratching lazily. A moment later, Tom’s hand rested on top of hers, warm and large enough to completely engulf hers. She stared at their hands, trying to calm her racing heart, trying to untie the knots in her stomach. The high from the show suddenly dropped to a nervous, panicky low.

“You alright?” Tom asked, leaning to talk into her ear. Lena nodded, turned her hand around in his, palm up. He entwined his fingers in hers, squeezing just a bit.

“I’m going to drop Bobby at home,” he said, “are you alright to wait in the car for a bit while I get him sorted?”

“Sure.”

“How was the show?”

“The best!” Lena said, getting excited again. “I’ve loved Moulin Rouge since it came out when I was a teenager. I’m so lucky I got to see the musical. It was so great. And I actually liked the changes they made,” she said. “You know how usually you hate when people change the original because it somehow ruins it? They actually made it better. I actually liked the Duke! Movie Duke was a creep. This one was… well, not a creep. Also bonus points for accent.”

“Oh?” Tom laughed. “You like accents?”

Shit. Lena’s smile faltered, cheeks going red again. She took a breath, might as well own up to it, “yeah.”

“Lucky me,” which was possibly the best thing he could’ve said in response, but it just made her cheeks grow more red, her heart beat just a bit faster, and the knots in her stomach tighten up.

They chatted for the rest of the ride, Tom making sure to include Scott in the conversation. They’ve arrived to their first stop not too long after, and Lena was left in the car with Scott as Tom apologised and went into the building to get Bobby settled back home.

“Do you do this a lot?” Lena asked, against her better judgement. There were some things she was better off not knowing.

“Do what?” he looked at her through the rear-view mirror, turning down the music a bit.

She wasn’t quite sure how to describe the situation _. Driving around his dates?_ Was she a date? Is that what was going on? She shook her head. It didn’t matter. Any label she put on it was just going to make things more confusing, any definition of the situation was just going to make it more real, somehow, and in that realness, make it worse. The abstract was her friend. The abstract was where the ifs and maybes lived, and she lived with them. The ifs and maybes of all the possible, and impossible, things.

“I’ve only been with Tom for a few weeks,” Scott said. “But he seems like a decent guy. I’ve seen worse, much worse.” Which didn’t answer her question but was good enough.

“I bet you’ve got stories to tell,” she smiled.

He smirked at her through the mirror, “so many. You’re getting none of them.”

“That’s fair,” she nodded. He laughed, turning up the volume on the radio. Lena took the hint, took out her phone and busied herself by scrolling through various app feeds until the door opened and Tom returned.

It was just five more minutes to get to her cousin’s place, and half of that time they’ve spent standing in traffic. They said goodbye to Scott, nodded hello to the man at the reception of her building, took the elevator up two floors. Lena caught the tail of one cat and the back of another as they’ve disappeared into the master bedroom when she walked in, opening the door wider for Tom. That was the most she’d seen of the cats throughout the weekend. She only knew they actually existed because their food bowl was empty come morning and evening, and there was fresh poop in their litter-box.

“I’ll be a minute,” she said, taking her coat off, “I’ll just feed the cats.”

“Cats?” Tom looked around.

“They’re in hiding. They don’t like people.”

“Oh.”

“D’you want to put the water on for some tea?” she motioned towards the kitchen. “Make yourself at home.”

There were two mugs on the counter and the kettle was just coming to a boil when Lena walked into the kitchen. Tom was leaning against the counter, watching the steam rise from the kettle on the table opposite, hands wrapped around himself.

“I couldn’t find the teabags,” he said when she walked in.

“Oh. Right. Hold on,” Lena left him there and went to the guest room, grabbing a couple of teabags from her suitcase. She presented them to him a moment later. “They’ve got all sorts of fancy tea around here,” she explained, “but no black tea. Breakfast tea ok?”

“Breakfast tea is fantastic,” Tom said, opening a bag and dropping it into a mug before pouring water over it. He held the kettle and waited for Lena to drop the second teabag in the empty mug, then filled it as well. Lena took out the milk from the fridge and topped up their mugs. They stood leaning against the counter, Lena’s right side pressed to Tom’s left, sipping their tea.

Several times, she opened her mouth to say something, but closed it right back, not uttering a sound. There were too many things to say, but none of them really important, none of them really mattered. So she sipped her tea in silence.

“Have you got Netflix?” Tom asked suddenly.

“Of course.”

“Let’s watch something,” he said, nodding towards the sofa in the living room, and her laptop on the coffee table where she’d left it earlier that day.

It was surprisingly easy to agree on a TV show to watch, something neither of them had seen before, and Lena clicked play on the first episode. They settled in, taking their shoes off, Tom with his feet spread in front of him, disappearing under the coffee table, hand thrown over the top of the couch, Lena with her feet curled to her side on the sofa, head resting on his shoulder. The laptop balanced on his thighs; screen angled backwards for a clearer view.

Two episodes in, with Tom’s arm now wrapped around her, Lena was stifling yawns between bursts of laughter. When the episode ended, he hit _back to browse_ rather than letting the new one load. Lena shifted, looking up at him, and Tom leaned down, placing a kiss on the side of her head, “you’re knackered,” he said, while she stared, her mind still stuck on the small, intimate gesture. “You should get some sleep.”

 _That_ caught her attention, “and you?”

“I’ll stay if you’d like.”

Lena nodded, making him smile.

“Go on then,” he didn’t quite push her off him and onto her feet, it was a lot more gentle than that, but she did end up on her feet, stretching and yawning once more. “I’ll get this sorted,” he motioned towards their mugs. Lena nodded again and went to grab her pyjamas, brush her teeth, shower and change. It was while she was braiding her wet hair that the thought had occurred to her, and she felt both proud for thinking of it, and an idiot for not thinking of it sooner. Like the previous night. She stepped out of the bathroom and went into the guest room, where Tom was sitting cross-legged on the bed, scrolling through his phone.

“I have something you could use,” she said, digging through her suitcase for the travel-kit she’d saved from her last flight. She pulled it out and grabbed the small toothbrush, presenting it proudly.

Tom laughed, “thank you!” he didn’t reach for it, though, instead he shifted around for good reach into his side-pocket, and produced a similar one, “I hope you don’t think I’m too presumptuous?” his smile was a bit shy, a bit cheeky.

“Oh,” Lena’s eyebrows shot up for a moment, and she put her brilliant idea back where it came from. The next thought was inevitable. He’d been prepared to stay. “What else did you bring?”

“Provisions.”

Blue eyes locked with brown, Lena’s throat went dry, she swallowed, “I’m not having sex with you.”

“Ever?”

“Tonight.”

He would leave. Lena steeled herself for the moment. For what he’d say. The apology. The politeness. The empty words before he would leave, and she’d be the one empty. She bit her lower lip, took a breath.

Tom shrugged, pushed himself off the bed to stand next to her, then leaned his head down, his nose nearly touching her hair, his lips at her ear, “what about some inappropriate touching?” he asked. “You’re released of any previous promises.”

It would’ve been funny, the speed at which her skin turned to a shade of red. It would have been funny if it weren’t embarrassing. Lena ignored it though, looked up into his eyes, smiled, “maybe.”

He smiled, pushing the single-use toothbrush through its nylon wrapping and throwing the wrapper away in the bin by the table. Then he turned and went into the bathroom. Lena stared at the empty doorway for a full minute, until she heard the sound of water from the other room. Then she snapped out of it, and busied herself with rearranging her suitcase to save time in the morning. She grabbed the laptop and charger from the living room and shoved them in her backpack, worried that she’d forget otherwise. She packed her spare pair of shoes, prepared her clothes. When the sound of the shower cut off, she caught the sound of the rain outside, and paused to stand by the window and watch.

That’s how he found her a few minutes later when he returned to the room. Standing barefoot, in a huge t-shirt, the sleeves down to her elbows, the hem down to mid-thigh, standing in the dimly lit room, watching the raindrops slide against the window pane, sparkling with the colour of a thousand little lights. He joined her, wrapping his arms around her middle, leaning down a bit awkwardly to rest his chin on her shoulder. She was just tall enough that he couldn’t rest it comfortably on top of her head.

“It’s raining,” she said, rather pointlessly. He had eyes to see it just as well as she had.

“I see,” he turned his head, his breath on her neck running shivers down her spine.

“I love the rain,” Lena said. “It’s pretty.”

“You’re pretty,” he said. She opened her mouth to protest, but his lips locked on her skin, and Lena’s mind went blank, the raindrops blurring.

The clock on the table showed 05:07 in bright red digits that Lena could barely make out. Considering the fact it was the latest she’d woken up since she landed, she considered it a success. Considering the fact she had still been awake less than 4 hours earlier, it was, in fact, a terrible failure. Tom shifted, his hand on her naked breast tightening for a moment as he spooned against her back. Lena froze, wondering whether she’d somehow woken him although she tried not to move when she woke up. She closed her eyes, willing for sleep to come back for a few more hours. It didn’t seem like too much to ask.

The next time she woke there was light outside, Tom was no longer spooned against her, and having been relieved of her sleeping shirt earlier that night, she was cold. He had his back to her, white and smooth, skin pressed tightly over muscles, tendons and bones. She stared at the space between his shoulder blades for a bit, at the barely visible protrusions of his spine higher up, towards his neck. He shifted, pulling the blanket they shared a bit further off her, and Lena realised why she was so cold. She moved closer to him, grabbed the edge of the blanket and pulled hard in her own direction, making sure it covered her back. Then she snuggled closer, her breasts pressing against his back, and put her hand over his side.

Tom took her hand in his, brought it higher up, snuggling it in under his chin like she’d done to his hand earlier, “get back to sleep,” it was barely audible.

It was the buzzing of a phone on the table that woke her next time, and the shifting bed as Tom climbed over to turn off the alarm. “Sorry,” he said, taking the phone and leaving the room. A minute later she heard his voice, calm and quiet, moving around the living room as he talked.

He was back a few minutes later. He put the phone back on the desk, then settled on the bed, this time on the outer side, facing her, “sleep alright?” he asked.

“Yeah, just not enough. You?”

“Never better,” he leaned to plant a soft kiss on her lips.

“Liar,” she spoke against his mouth and he grinned, putting his weight against her to make her turn on her back, shifting until she was trapped underneath him. He kissed a trail down her neck, to her breast, then to the other and back up.

“Do you remember last night,” he spoke softly, lips barely leaving her skin as he did, “when you said you’re not having sex with me?”

“mmhmm,” it was hard to think straight.

“And I asked you, _ever_?” his lips found a spot just below her ear that made her lose her breath. “And you said, _tonight_?”

“mmhmm,” was the most coherent thing she could say.

“It’s morning,” he said, shifting higher on his elbows, breaking contact with her skin and looking down at her, grinning.

Lena shook her head, her breath now stuck in her throat for an entirely different reason, “No.” She could barely get the word out.

“Why?”

It took her a moment to answer, and she had to look away before she had, focusing on the small scar on his forehead rather than his eyes “I’m scared.”

“Of sex?”

Lena laughed, “no!”

“Then?”

“I’m leaving,” she said. “I’m scared of how much more it’s going to hurt.”

“It’s just sex,” Tom said.

“I get attached,” she tried to shrug, but it was hard to do lying down. “It’s bad enough already. I don’t want any more.”

“Okay,” he said, shifting off her and on her other side. “Then we’ve got a bit more time to sleep,” he pulled her close, and Lena settled with her head in the crook of his arm. “Maybe you’ll have some more freaky dreams for me,” his breath ruffled her hair.

“I didn’t have any freaky dreams tonight,” Lena said. She always remembered those kinds of dreams. Always. There were no dreams she remembered from last night.

“No,” he said, “don’t worry. I slept like a dead man. No nightmares. Only my own dreams.”

Long fingers moved hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear, “I was curious though. I thought maybe…”

“It doesn’t actually happen often,” Lena said, talking to his chest, since his face was somewhere just out of sight.

He pulled the blanket up over them, up to their shoulders, and settled more comfortably into the bed. Lena shifted against him, putting her arm around him and snuggling close. Thunder rolled outside, promising more rain. She kissed the patch of his skin closest to her, “I’m sorry,” it was barely audible.

His hands around her tightened briefly, and he pressed a kiss to the side of her head, “another time,” he said. “I hope you’ll come back.”

Lena swallowed hard, “me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title song  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3b0-i1T8Hk


	6. Intermission

**September 8, 2019**

14:37

Final prep before the show. Fly safe. Text me when you land x

14:39

Break a leg! But not really. I will. x

14:39

This is the emptiest terminal I’ve ever been to. Also I’m an idiot who’s bought water before the security check 

19:52

Oh no! What did you do?

19:52

Show went well, btw. Didn’t physically break a leg, thankfully.

19:54

Plane didn’t crash. Taxiing now. I talked to the girls at the shop and they let me leave the bottle and pick up another one after security. Was very nice of them.

20:03

Glad your plane didn’t crash. How long do you think until you get to your hotel?

20:03

An hour maybe. Maybe a bit more. Depending on how fast I get out of here.

20:03

Cool. Let me know how it goes.

20:27

I am the kind of idiot who’s unable to figure out how to get a simple car out of park. So I took the one from the fancy aisle that was assigned to me. Think it’s big enough?

20:29

Not sure you’ll fit…

20:33

OK, getting ready to drive now. Wish me luck.

20:34

Luck

21:40

Made it to the hotel. Three dead racoons on the way. Not sure what it means but I don’t like it.

**September 9, 2019**

04:07

Sorry, fell asleep. Glad you made it x

17:39

Help! I’m at Half Price Books and there’s no one to stop me!

17:52

I’m also not there to stop you. What have you got so far?

17:54

Oscar Wilde, a dystopian collection (in leather!!), My Brilliant Friend, Far From the Madding Crowd, Macbeth

17:56

Have you got Anna Karenina?

17:57

No. Should I?

17:57

Yes

17:57

OK

**September 11, 2019**

14:43

You’ve been quiet. All good?

14:45

Yes, just busy. You good?

14:46

Yes. About to leave for the theatre.

14:47

I wish I could be there x

14:47

Me too x

**September 12, 2019**

16:13

Is it weird that my favorite thing in SeaTac is to watch the sunset out of the lounge windows?

16:28

Not at all. Are you flying out then?

16:29

In a bit. Killing time for now.

16:29

Did you dream about the flight last night?

16:30

…yes

16:30

I thought so. I had a dream.

16:31

*my* dream?

16:31

I think so. You were there. It was a little naughty 

16:35

I’m… sorry?

16:36

What on earth for?

16:36

I’m not sorry then

16:40

Can I call?

16:41

Sure

**September 13, 2019**

15:12

It’s all fun and games, until my flight is delayed to an unknown time and I have to walk back for 20 minutes to get to the main terminal 

16:08

I’m sorry. Do you have a new time scheduled yet?

16:11

No. I’ve set up a small settlement in the business lounge, and am slowly going through every single thing the buffet has to offer.

16:12

Sounds like you’ve got this covered then x

19:29

Upgraded to business!!!

19:31

Nice! Enjoy! When are you flying?

19:32

Two more hours… I hope.

19:33

Fingers crossed xx

**September 18, 2019**

18:22

Hey, what are you up to? x

18:24

Just about to take the dog for a walk. You? x

18:25

The same, actually. Want to have a call?

18:26

Yes! Give me 5min so I’ll be out already x

**September 21, 2019**

00:09

Reading your book between shows. There is something to it. Just got to that part we read on the roof. Makes me miss you x

00:10

I miss you too x

00:10

Why aren’t you asleep??

00:11

Heard the phone buzz

00:11

This is your last buzz. Go to sleep x

00:12

Yes sir

05:56

Did you have any more dreams about me? x

06:10

Not that I remember, why? x

06:11

Just curious. We don’t sleep at the same time anymore. I don’t know when you’ve had naughty dreams about me ☹

06:11

I promise to tell you if I have any more naughty dreams about you, ok?

06:12

OK xx

06:13

I gotta get ready for work. Good night x

06:14

Have a good day x

**September 26, 2019**

15:21

Can’t make our call tonight. Have a thing. I’ll text you when I’m free.

15:33

OK

20:46

Can talk in 15min if that works?

21:08

Sorry, was in the shower. 5min?

21:53

Got pulled into another call. Now?

**September 27, 2019**

02:17

Sorry, fell asleep. Going back now. tomorrow? x

05:03

Yes. I’ll call x

**September 30, 2019**

07:36

I had a dream about you. Not naughty. Just weird.

14:12

I can’t wait to hear all about it. Call later? x

14:30

Yes. After work. x

14:31

Can’t wait 😊 xx

14:31

Xxx


	7. Intermission - 2

**October 3, 2019**

12:19

I hate everyone and everything. OK? OK.

13:33

What happened?

13:58

Everyone just decided that today is the day to reduce me to blind raging murder.

13:58

Nevermind. Sorry. I’ll be fine. Weekend is coming.

14:04

Don’t murder anyone, it’s not worth it. And I won’t be able to visit you in prison for months yet…

14:05

And there’s no Netflix in prison.

14:05

14:06

But I want the record to show that I hate this day with the fire of a thousand suns.

14:08

Talk more Shakespeare to me, baby x

14:10

Isn’t that my line? :-P xx

14:11

I’ll talk all the Shakespeare you want to you, you know that.

14:11

Still on for our call tomorrow? x

14:12

Yep.

14:12

Gotta go, my to-do list needs me :/ xx

**October 5, 2019**

20:43

So I did a thing. Check your email.

23:46

You didn’t!!! xxxx

23:50

I did. It’s just for the weekend but I thought why the hell not?

23:52

That’s fantastic. I can’t wait x

23:53

Wait isn’t that your birthday?

23:54

😊

23:55

I can’t believe you x

23:55

Good surprise? x

23:56

The best. Go sleep. Dream something naughty x

**October 7, 2019**

14:06

I know you’re at work, but any chance you can talk now? I’ve got a full itinerary for the afternoon :/

14:11

In 20 min? I’ll go on a coffee break.

14:12

Perfect x

**October 8, 2019**

06:22

I dreamed that we were dancing again. No zombies this time. But you thought I was bad and left me a note with multiple choice answers, and you marked X at “no more dancing.”

06:27

That doesn’t sound like me at all x

06:28

And yet

06:28

:-* have a good day

**October 10, 2019**

18:02

Where are you at with Brooklyn 99?

18:30

S2E12

18:31

Shit… sorry, I’m already at 3.

18:32

I wish I had that much free time. I can’t even finish a book properly because I don’t have time to read ☹

18:33

What are you doing now?

18:33

Emails. Dinner. Then Netflix for a bit.

18:34

Well why won’t you read instead of Netflix?

18:34

Because my Netflix backlog is insane and I like to read in bed, and it’s too early to go to bed.

18:34

…

18:35

Don’t try to use logic on me

18:36

Sorry, what was I thinking… xx

18:36

Xx

**October 15, 2019**

09:16

Are you mad at me about the hotel thing? I know it’s potentially a waste of money but my mind just goes to the scariest places and this way I feel safe. I don’t care if I don’t set foot in it after I check in, I just want to know it’s there in case something happens.

14:05

I’m not mad at you. I think you’re being unreasonably stubborn and wasting money for nothing. But I’m not mad, I understand the reasoning. Nothing bad will happen.

14:09

We haven’t spoken since so I wasn’t sure…

14:10

Not mad. Just distracted. Work and all…

14:10

I’ll call you later today x

14:11

OK 😊 I should be home around 17:30ish

14:13

I’ll be taking Bobster out around lunch, I’ll call then. Stop worrying.

14:17

I’m not sure I’m physically capable

**October 16, 2019**

05:14

Good morning x

I’m off to bed

06:32

Good night, hope you’re sleeping well x

14:58

Slept like a dead man

15:00

Jealous. Haven’t slept like a dead man in years

**October 18, 2019**

16:04

Are you free for a call before 11:30 your time? I’m going to my friends’ house for dinner and a movie.

16:12

How about in 30min?

What movie? 😊

16:13

Yeah, perfect. I’ll be here.

Don’t know yet, we’ll see what they have to stream.

20:27

A 5-year-old is kicking my ass in Taki…

20:41

What is Taki?

20:43

A card game. I think it’s similar to Uno but I’ve never played Uno so I don’t know.

20:44

I’ll look it up.

I hope you’re not playing on the same stakes we did… xx

20:49

…he’s 5.

20:51

Your point?

20:52

I’m rolling my eyes at you so hard you should be able to see it all the way in NY

20:52

**October 20, 2019**

08:05

I hate Sundays with a passion. But not this Sunday because it’s a holiday. Fuck. Yeah!

15:06

And good morning to you too x

15:10

Morning x

15:14

So what have you been up to on your day off?

15:19

Sleep, mostly. But I’ve read on the balcony for a bit and it was the best.

15:20

Finally! So how do you like it?

15:22

It’s nice. It’s interesting. It hasn’t gripped me in a “I can’t put it down” way which I don’t like because I really hoped it would :/ but I am liking it.

15:23

What’s the last book that gripped you like that?

15:23

You have it. But before that… hold on let me think

15:24

This is bad…

15:25

No it’s just been a while. There were plenty. Let me think.

15:29

OK I can’t think of the *last* one, but here are some of the ones around my room that I’ve binge-read:

Kingkiller Chronicles (work of art!)

Outlander series

Orphan X

Jojo Moyes books (don’t judge me, they’re my guilty pleasure)

Fury

Into the Wild

Song of Ice and Fire

15:31

I recognise less than half of those…

15:32

I’m bad with the classics. I should do better.

15:33

Well you did get Anna Karenina so you’re on the path to a good start.

15:35

Yes, maybe I’ll read that next. Off my list, I’d say you should read Fury, but I’m not sure you could get your hand on a copy. I barely got mine.

15:35

Who’s the author?

15:36

Colin Falconer

15:36

I’ll look into it

**October 24, 2019**

11:08

Two weeks!!! Not that I’m counting or anything

14:46

Me neither… xx

15:01

Sorry, trying not to drown at work. Talk later.

15:01

Have a good day! X

15:05

You too x

**October 27, 2019**

06:22

What are you doing for Halloween?

6:23

Secret. Have a nice day xx

08:16

What are you doing for Halloween?

10:39

What are you doing for Halloween??

12:04

What are you doing for Halloween???

13:57

What are you doing for Halloween????

14:24

SECRET.

14:25

Patience woman. You’ll find out when everyone else does.

14:31

I’ll be asleep when everyone else finds out. This isn’t fair. Tell me.

14:32

No.

14:32

TELL ME

14:32

NO

14:33

TELL MEEEEEEEEEE

14:34

Bye xx

**October 28, 2019**

06:21

TELL MEEEEEEE

06:23

Have a nice day xx

06:23

Good night x

06:23

And also

06:24

TELL MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

**October 29, 2019**

06:21

TELL ME!

Xx

14:46

Soon.

14:49

Soon before everyone else?

14:51

Yes, soon before everyone else xx

14:52

YESSSSSS!

**October 31, 2019**

17:27

Enjoy tonight! Xx

I expect pictures. Obviously.

17:56

Obviously. Talk soon x

**November 1, 2019**

04:58


	8. Broadway Here I Come

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas & Happy Hannukah to all those who celebrate.
> 
> Title song:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCkQbf2YPmY

Lena’s lips were dry, her eyes glued shut together, or near enough, under the airline-provided eye-mask that blocked out the muted light of the cabin. She needed to get up, move her seat and get to her bottle, stashed away in the drawer. Instead, she turned on her other side, adjusting the noise-cancelling headphones as one moved off her ear a bit and let in the noise of the engines. The huge pillow was just right to fit in the crook of her shoulder. She shifted until she was comfortable again, and let her mind drift to the sounds of the electronic chillout of her sleep playlist. There was no sleep to be had, of course. Not even in her business class seat, a surprise she’d learned of only when she checked-in at the airport counter and saw the seats on her ticket. She hadn’t been able to check in online due to some technical issue. Seeing her tickets, she wondered if that was the source of the issue. If so, she hoped for more of them in the future. Life in business class was entirely different from premium economy. Life in business class included being able to actually lie down. Full length. With a fluffy pillow and a warm blanket. She could get used to life in business class.

It’s been hours since she’d slept. Not a few hours. Many, many hours. She’d gotten up at 6:20am as usual to get to work, was in the office almost a full day, then gone home to pack and shower, walk her dog and drop her off at her mother’s. The train was closed for the night due to maintenance work, so she had to take the shuttle to the airport, which meant she’d be there way too early for her flight. Shuttle arrived at midnight, she was at the airport just after 2am, for her 6:10am flight. She killed an hour until the check-in counters opened just sitting on the floor in the check in area, watching Netflix on her laptop. She was the first at the counter once it opened, then through security and in the lounge within half an hour, where she killed time with more Netflix and texted Tom, telling him about her surprise upgrade.

_I’m glad you like my present_ _😊_

That man.

Now, after a 5 hour flight to London, a 3 hour connection and most of the 8 hours’ flight to NYC behind her, she tried to calculate how many hours straight she’d been awake, but failed. She was too tired for math. Instead, she prepared for the inevitable – getting to New York, seeing Tom again. The plan, if it worked, was to get to the hotel, shower the travel grime off her and get to the theatre in time for stage door. Lena wanted to do it, get the full theatre experience, including standing in anticipation and letting out excited yelps every time the stage door opened. Get her playbill signed, do the selfie, the whole shebang. She hoped Scott would remember her and let her through into the enclosure, despite her not having come out of a show. She wanted to surprise Tom. Lena imagined the look on his face, knew it’ll only be there for a moment before he put on his _official_ face back on, not wanting to alert the masses. Maybe he’d say, “it’s nice to see you again,” “you too,” she’d answer. Maybe his eyes would widen momentarily but he’d say nothing at all. Maybe he’d let her through the barrier and backstage with him, right in front of everyone.

Not likely.

_“Hey Tom, d’you wanna dance?”_

_“With you?”_

_“No, with my father…”_

Now there’s a scenario that was never going to happen. Did he even know Rent? Lena made a mental note to find out.

Her imagination got her through the last bit of the flight, and as they were preparing to land, Lena watched New York appearing at an angle through the airplane window, then disappearing as the plane turned. She’d turned off the sleep playlist and went back to her random one, and the song that came on as they were landing made her chuckle. It was oddly appropriate; except for the fact it was about suicide. _Broadway here I come, indeed_. And nothing has ever felt more like falling through the sky than those last minutes of a plane landing.

Going through JFK this time wasn’t nearly as breezy as last. The line just to get to the immigration officer was over an hour, and Lena watched as her stage door plans slowly crumbled to dust. There was still a chance, but it was growing smaller with each passing minute.

She’d texted with Tom a bit throughout, and with her friends in upstate New York and Toronto who were in the same time zone and thus, awake. It helped pass the time. Eventually she was through immigration directly to baggage claim, where her suitcase was already off the stopped conveyer belt.

Lena spotted her name on a sign held by a man; the driver Tom had sent for her. She tried to protest, but didn’t put a lot of heart into it. It was cheaper than an Uber, and Tom swore up and down that it was no trouble and at no extra expense to him due to some arrangement with his pickup service company. It was the same big black SUV that she’d ridden in before, or an identical one. Lena settled in the back seat and watched the sun set over the city as they made their way through Queens and through the tunnel into Manhattan. It took over an hour with traffic.

At seven and ten minutes, Lena was finally in her room on the 25th floor. At seven forty-five, she was brushing her wet hair, getting the tangles out. At seven fifty she stood at the full-length windows that made up the farthest wall of her room and watched the rain pelt against them. Maybe going to the stage door tonight wasn’t her best idea ever. The bed was calling to her, a siren’s call of warmth and comfort and sleep.

It was too early for sleep, though. That was certain. If she went now, she’d be bouncing around at 2am like it was the middle of the morning.

Stage door to pass the time.

Lena dressed, putting on her fleece-lined black leggings, two layers of shirts, a fresh warm pair of socks. The weather app on her phone said it was 2C outside, and her brief venture into the evening air going from the car to the hotel door confirmed that she was not going outside without being well bundled up. She was not made for that kind of cold.

In the end, though, she only managed to go as far as the hotel bar and order soup for dinner. The rain outside continued, her energy was nonexistent and even the need to stay awake and the promise of seeing Tom wasn’t enough to convince her to step out of the hotel and into the cold outside.

She was in bed by 9pm, having taken a double-dose of melatonin which she knew would do very little for her sleep.

At a few minutes to ten her phone rang, it took Lena a moment to figure out the source of the disorienting sound, and she flailed trying to answer the WhatsApp call, “allo?”

“Lena,” her name in that voice, in that accent, brought her right back into focus.

“Hi,” she smiled.

“Did I wake you?”

“No,”

“I’ll be at the hotel in a few minutes, what room are you in?”

“2504, but you won’t be able to come up without a key. I’ll come get you.”

“Fantastic, see you soon.”

Lena got out of bed with an amount of energy not at all compatible with the melatonin she’d taken and all the sleep she didn’t have, and pulled on the tartan pajama pants she’d taken off earlier when she’d warmed up under the covers. The fluffy socks went back on again, and she put on her Game of Thrones hoodie on top of her oversized Iron Man tshirt. She put on her boots, knowing she looked ridiculous and not caring, grabbed her room key and left the room.

The elevator was brightly lit and Lena squinted, trying to get her eyes adjusted to the light on the surprisingly short ride down. The lobby was even brighter. Lena pulled on the hood of her shirt over her head. It did little to help against the light, but she felt more protected somehow. She loitered around, watching the transparent doors, her stomach tying itself in knots with every passing second. She saw the black SUV stop on the road outside the hotel, there was nowhere by the curb to park, so it just stopped in the middle of the road. The back door opened and Tom came out, the collar of his black coat turned up against the coat, a baseball hat pressing his curls to his head, shading his eyes. A backpack was slung over one shoulder.

He didn’t seem very tall when he walked the few steps to the doors or as he walked through them. His eyes scanned the space for just a second before locking on her and he smiled, taking long strides and covering the distance between them in half a dozen steps. He seemed very tall when he stood right next to her, though, smiling down.

“Hi,” he said, he moved his hands towards her then, conscious of the reception desk nearby and the fact that anyone could walk in at any minute, dropped them back to his sides.

“Hi,” Lena answered, calling the elevator again.

They waited a few seconds until it arrived, blissfully empty, and Lena passed her room key over the reader, then picked her floor. The doors closed.

I missed you.

I can’t believe you’re here.

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Then the doors opened, and she quietly led the way around the corner to her room. Tom followed half a step behind her, the weight of his footsteps heard behind her more than their actual sound.

Another door, there were far too many doors in this hotel. Lena put the key in the slot and pushed the door open, walked into the room and heard Tom follow her in, close the door. She dropped the key on the table, bent down to take her boots off.

“Lena,” she took her other boot then turned towards him. He was standing right behind her, the backpack now on the floor by her suitcase. She looked up and the world was reduced to the blue of his eyes, and she couldn’t breathe.

“I missed you,” she said, hands hanging awkwardly at the side of her body. She wasn’t quite sure what to with them, with herself.

“I missed you too,” Tom said, taking his baseball hat off, placing it on the table. He didn’t even have to move to reach it.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she blinked, pressing at the moisture gathering in her eyes. She was not going to cry. Absolutely not.

“I can’t believe _you’re_ here,” he countered. “Was your flight alright?”

Lena smiled, “better than I expected. Thank you so much.”

His returning smile lit up the room more than the bedside lamp, “Happy birthday.”

“It’s not my birthday yet,” she said.

“It is somewhere,” he shrugged, unbuttoning his coat. Lena watched as he took it off, hung it on the back of the chair then turned back to her. All the scenarios she’d worked out in her head, and none of them included him just showing up at her hotel room. Which was stupid, since this is what they’d planned.

“Give us a hug, then,” he spread his arms and Lena stepped into them immediately, going on her tip toes and wrapping her arms around his neck just as his closed around her middle. He smelled faintly of perfume, shampoo and detergent, and underneath it all, of _him_. How could she have forgotten this smell? “finally,” he mumbled against the skin of her neck.

“You smell nice,” Lena whispered, taking a deep breath, her nose in the crook of his shoulder.

She felt his body shake with laughter, “so do you.”

Lena took a step back, “hey, do you know Rent?”

“The musical?”

“Yes.”

“mmhmm…?” the question was intoned in his answer.

“Sorry, I was just having conversations with you inside my head while I was flying and it came up.”

“In the conversation inside your head?”

Lena nodded.

“Why weren’t you sleeping? You should’ve been sleeping.”

Another step back, this time untangling herself from his arms, “I told you,” she pulled the sweatshirt over her head, “I don’t sleep on planes.”

“You must be knackered,” Tom said. Then looked around the room – her phone charging on the bedside table, the messed up blankets, only one small light coming from the bedside lamp. “I did wake you!”

“You didn’t wake me,” Lena said, sitting on the edge of the bed and motioning for him to sit next to her. “I don’t think I know how to sleep anymore.” It was meant as a joke, but even now, barely able to keep her eyes open, she wasn’t sure she’d actually be able to sleep given the opportunity.

Tom sat beside her, picked her hand up off the mattress, turned it this way and that in his own, “I’m sure you’re exaggerating,” he said.

“We’ll see,” she shrugged.

They sat in silence for a moment, Lena staring into space, trying to gather her scattered thoughts and put them in some sort of order. She could see their reflection in the turned off flatscreen tv in front of them. He sat straight and tall, an imposing figure even when just a shadow. She was small and slumping. She straightened up, and a moment later leaned to the side, letting her head thump into his shoulder. She was so, so tired.

Tom brought his hand around her back, pulled her closer to his chest, the fingers of his other hand brushing away the hair that escaped her braid and was now falling on her face. He tucked the errant strands behind her ear, the tips of his fingers tickling her check, her neck. Lena closed her eyes and listened to his heartbeat somewhere under the layers of clothes and skin.

“I’m so happy you came,” he said.

“Mmhmm,” words were becoming something that required way too much effort to make.

Lena knew, logically, that he had taken his clothes off and folded them up on the chair, she knew she’d taken off her socks and pajama pants and threw them in the general direction of her open suitcase. Knew they’d climbed into bed together, and that she’d reached to turn off the bedside lamp. She knew all this, but what her mind actually registered was sitting with her head on Tom’s shoulder, and then lying down in the dark room, her head now on a pillow, Tom wrapped around her back, her hand wrapped in his tucked under her chin and a blanket over them both.

She turned around when one nostril blocked and the other cleared, faced him in the darkness. He was too close. She couldn’t sleep with him that close. How did she ever think she’d get any sleep with him there?

“What?” his voice rasped in the quiet of the room.

Lena’s eyes danced across his face, and she reached a hand, tracing the sharp lines that stood out in the darkness. Forehead to eyebrows to nose to cheekbones. The beard scratched her open palm. “Can I kiss you?” barely audible, but loud enough for him to hear.

Tom smiled, nodded, pulled her closer.

“Sleep,” he said after a while, placing a kiss to her hairline, tucking her in the crook of his arm with her nose to his chest. “You’re barely coherent.”

Lena made a protesting sound, it was meant as “I can’t fall asleep,” but not a single actual word came out of her mouth.

Tom chuckled, “close your eyes, take deep breaths, stop thinking so loud.”

“אני לא”

“What?

Lena paused. Oh, wrong language. “I’m not,” there. Actual words. Coherent ones. In a language he understood.

He shook his head, she felt it rather than saw it, on account of her eyes being closed as instructed. “Shush, sleep.”

Her 10th grade English teacher used to tell them to shush. Lena opened her mouth to tell him- “No,” his voice stopped her short. “Sleep.”


	9. Always Remember Us This Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title Song -  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1godKRBeZc
> 
> This was unexpectedly hard to write. Hopefully my muse will come back.

It wasn’t a dream that woke Lena in the small hours of the night, nor was it, surprisingly enough, the jetlag. It was the quiet chime of one incoming WhatsApp message after another, over and over again. The red digits of the digital clock on the bedside table – the only source of light inside the room – claimed it was the ungodly hour of 02:17. Lena fumbled with the phone, squinting against the glare of the screen as she silenced it completely. Once done, she rolled over, burrowing into the warmth of the man sharing her bed. He grumbled something unintelligible and shifted a bit, then started snoring lightly.

Lena almost cried upon hearing the sound. It was bad enough having trouble sleeping in general, with another human being in her bed specifically, with that particular man in her bed even more. The additional sound effects were bound to keep her awake. She took slow, deep breaths, trying to tune out the sound. Eventually he rolled over to his side and stopped.

The next time Lena woke up it _was_ the jetlag that woke her, at 03:28. She rolled over a few times and refused to let the fact that her body thought it was, in fact, 10:28, stand in her way. Eventually she fell back into a fitful sleep, with dreams full of impossible stairs that she had to go up, for no other reason than that was what the dream demanded.

At 04:42 she gave up on the notion of sleep and got up to use the bathroom. When she got back into the bed, Tom was lying on his side, watching her. He lifted the blanket for her to get under.

“Good morning,” his voice rasped in the quiet room, throat dry from sleep.

“Morning,” Lena smiled. “Sorry I woke you.”

“No worries,” a hand trailed down her neck, warm hand on cold skin, slowly making its way down her arm, around her back, down to her thigh, pulling her closer. Lena didn’t resist. Her own hand was following a similar path on his body.

It was a quiet affair. Whispers, grunts and sighs, a brief pause to roll a condom on, then more sighs, gasps, some words that didn’t really make any sense but were said, nonetheless.

“I’m glad you’re not afraid anymore,” he said later, as she was lying on top of him, breathless.

The statement made her lose her breath quickly, almost a chuckle. “I’m terrified,” she said.

“Oh?” he shifted so that he could look at her face, “of what?”

“Everything,” Lena said. He lifted an eyebrow. She opened her mouth to continue but realized she couldn’t find the words to explain or elaborate. “It doesn’t matter. I’m doing things anyway, aren’t I?”

Tom kissed the tip of her nose, “you’re being very brave, flying across the ocean to spend time with the tall scary man.”

She pushed off him, settling back on the mattress, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lena said, “I came here for the shopping.”

His eyes widened, “you minx!” but he laughed, a sound to bring light to the darkened room.

Tom fell back to sleep shortly after, but there was no sleep for Lena. After replying to all the birthday messages on her phone, she pulled out her laptop and sat by the table, headphones on, legs drawn up on the chair, cleaning out her inbox and taking care of urgent tasks. There were things she could’ve left until she was back home on Tuesday, but she was awake and with nothing better to do anyway, and it was one less thing to do later. The light outside crept up on her while she worked, and she was surprised to find the room well-lit when she looked away from the screen. She was even more surprised to feel a hand on her shoulder a moment later.

Lena pushed the headphones off her ears and turned, looking up. He stood behind her, tall and completely naked, “I’m going to pop in the shower,” he said, “wanna come?” she smiled but shook her head.

“Your loss,” he shrugged.

“I know,” she stood up, hand brushing up his stomach and through chest hair, resting there for balance as she got on her tiptoes. She kissed the corner of his mouth. A palm on her neck kept her from breaking the kiss as he turned his face just a little to turn it into a proper kiss. “Last chance,” he whispered against her mouth, his other hand sneaking under her shirt and up to her breast.

Lena rolled her eyes, “well when you put it this way.”

Tom grinned, stepping back, “fantastic,” he took her hand, pulling her towards the bathroom.

“So what’s the plan for the day?” Tom asked, lifting the steaming cup of coffee to his lips. They were sitting on pillows on the floor by the window, the tray of room-service breakfast between them. There was only one chair in the room, and Lena flat out refused to eat in the bed.

“I thought I’d go to the Morgan Library, the pictures said it’s very pretty. Then walk to the park from there.”

He nodded, making a sound somewhere deep in his chest that was meant as approval but what it mostly did was distract Lena from her train of thought, “I’ve got that meeting I have to be at, then some calls until noon, but I’ve freed up everything after until the show. You’ll come over to mine?”

Lena took a bite of her toast, nodding.

“What do you want to do for lunch?”

“I don’t know. Food.”

“You want to narrow that down for me maybe?” he smiled.

She shook her head, shrugging, “not spicy food.”

Time went sideways when she was with Tom. On one hand, it seemed like they’d spent so much time together that morning. On the other, she was alone again before 9, and not quite sure where all the time went. It was an effort to force herself into another layer of clothes, put her scarf, coat and hat on, pack essentials in her backpack and leave the warm and comfy room for the freezing cold sunshine of New York City. It was an effort because a, she wanted to sleep more than anything and b, she really didn’t look forward to the cold.

The Morgan Library was still closed when Lena reached it, with half an hour to spare until opening time. She rolled her eyes, opened the map on her phone and made her way to her next destination – Bryant Park. She walked around the market stalls, inspecting the merchandise, considering the pros and cons of spending money on things she didn’t really need, but wanted. She ended up buying a snowflake necklace from one of the stalls, which was reason enough to keep her hands in her pockets and her credit card safely in her wallet and away from the vendor tills. She watched people skate for a while, listening to the music in her earphones rather than the one playing over the speakers.

Rather than the Morgan Library, she went into the Public Library, and defrosted there while walking around the huge, beautiful structure. She snapped a photo and sent Tom, then continued walking, methodically going through the entire building. Big, pretty buildings that held books, be they old or new, were her happy place. The only problem was that every nook and cranny she walked by distracted her with thoughts of getting pressed against the wall by a tall, handsome man, and thoroughly kissed.

By the time she’d reached the park, just short of noon, Lena’s feet hurt from walking, her nose hurt from the cold and her fingers were intermittently losing feeling. She looked longingly at the Pret a Manger across the street from the park entrance, but thought that if she walked in, she might not come back out into the cold. Better to do the park first. She was quick to steer off the main path and down some stairs into a side-path, where there were far fewer people. She walked slowly, stopping often to take photos of the colorful leaves. Yellow, orange and red as far as the eye could see, with green grass in between. Maybe it wasn’t buildings with books that were her happy place, maybe it was the autumn leaves of the trees in the park.

It could have been both, though.

The incoming text message from Tom, letting her know he’d be free in 20 minutes and asking her when she’d be coming over, caused an unexpected surge of panic. She tried to get it under control as she made her way to his address, texting him that she was on her way. What was she even doing, flying halfway across the world for him? for this? for what? Nothing but pain and heartache. There was no other way for it to end. She had a home, a job, responsibilities and ties that, despite her wanderlust and dreams of running away, kept her firmly in one place, at least for the foreseeable future. He had his own job, his own responsibilities, his own priorities. It was never going to work. And yet here she was, spending her birthday away from everyone she knew, away from everyone who loved her. Alone in a foreign city she didn’t even like. Because of him. This was James all over again, except even worse because he made her no promises to break, and there was no hope, no way for this to end in anything other than the inevitable separation.

She was so, so stupid.

And yet.

And yet her feet carried her the rest of the way to his building, and yet she punched in the entry code, nodded at the guard, pressed the elevator button. And yet she knocked on his door, trying to settle the stones swirling around in her stomach.

And then he opened it, smiling brightly and stepping aside to let her in, and the stones settled of their own accord. She smiled back, taking off her shoes and placing them by his in the small entry hall, dropping her backpack next to them.

“Got any new books?” he asked, hanging up her coat for her.

“Surprisingly no.”

“Well there’s still time,” Tom shrugged, “come on in,” he motioned towards the living space, putting a hand on the small of her back to guide her in. Bobby tangled between their feet, his tail wagging excitedly. He jumped up on the sofa and on Lena’s lap the moment she sat down, shoving his head under her hand for scratches.

“Hungry?” Tom asked, “or just tea for now?”

“Tea is good,” Lena said.

“Right,” she watched him move around in the small kitchen space, preparing the tea, putting biscuits on a small plate. A few minutes later he presented her with a plate of biscuits, lemon cake and actual scones, and rich, dark tea.

“What do you want to do?” he asked, sitting down beside her.

“Sleep,” Lena chuckled. That was a thing she wasn’t supposed to be doing.

“Terrible idea. We could take a walk?” he suggested.

“Another terrible idea.”

“Right, yes. Want to watch a film? Will you stay awake?”

Lena nodded, “yeah, let’s do that.”

It took them a ridiculously long amount of time to realize that what they really wanted to watch was a Disney cartoon, and then it was instantly decided that since it was her birthday, Lena got to choose the film. Five minutes into Mulan, Tom announced that afterwards they’d be watching The Jungle Book. Lena had no objections.

Tom made pasta bolognaise while Lena cut vegetables for a salad, both of them dancing around the small space, singing along to the Disney playlist. When it was time to eat, though, Lena sat mostly torturing her food rather than eating it, playing with each strand of pasta, twirling the vegetables around in their sauce.

“Is it that bad?” Tom asked, nodding towards her plate.

“Just not very hungry,” Lena said. “I guess I had too much cake with the tea.”

“Oh.”

She made an effort and finished about half her portion, then helped Tom put the rest of the food in containers. She spotted the cake in the fridge while she was putting one of the containers away. “Tom?”

“Hmm?” she nearly jumped; he was right behind her.

“Is that more cake?”

“Yes, d’you want it?”

She nodded, her hair bobbing up and down with the motion.

“I thought you weren’t hungry,” he wrapped his arms around her, pressed against her back, chin on her shoulder.

“Cake doesn’t count.”

He kissed the side of her neck, “a woman after my own heart. Go have a seat,” he pulled her away from the fridge, closing the door, and turned her towards the living room, gently pushing her away from himself. “I’ll get us another pot of tea and bring the cake out. Get The Jungle Book started.”

He brought out more tea, and then paused the movie and went back to the kitchen only to come out with the cake in his hands, a single candle lit on top. “Make a wish,” he said, bringing the cake close enough for Lena to blow the candle out. She watched the flame dance for a moment, uncertain. Then looked up at the man holding the cake, his blue eyes glinting with the light of the dancing flame, their corners crinkling with his smile, the hair falling on his forehead. Lena closed her eyes for a moment, making her wish, then blew the candle.

They watched the movie while drinking tea and going through half the cake, curled up against each other on Tom’s sofa, Bobby lying at Tom’s feet.

A phone call shattered their quiet idyll, and Lena groaned, reaching out for her phone on the coffee table while Tom paused the movie. She answered, talking in rapid Russian, getting up to pace around the room as she spoke.

“Can I just say,” Tom said when Lena settled against him again, “you sound incredibly sexy when you’re speaking Russian.”

Lena chuckled, not quite sure what to say to that.

“Birthday wishes?” he asked.

“Yes, my grandpa’s brother calling from Germany.”

When the movie ended shortly after, they remained cuddled on the sofa in the same position. Tom’s hand was around Lena’s waist, holding her close. Lena’s head resting against his shoulder, tucked inexplicably comfortably against the bone, muscle and sinew there.

“Are you falling asleep?” his head turned, nose to her hair.

“mmhmm,” Lena nodded, eyes closed against the world.

“That’s not good,” but he didn’t make a move to get her up and moving.

“Just for a little,” it wasn’t whining in her voice. Nope. She was just exhausted and warm and comfortable.

The air leaving his nose as he chuckled ruffled her hair, “alright.”

Rubbing her eyes and sitting up, Lena was horrified to see a drool on Tom’s shirt. “Shit, I’m sorry,” she tried drying it with the sleeve of her shirt, but it didn’t help.

Tom caught her hand, “it’s fine,” brought her palm to his lips and kissed it briefly. “Feeling better?” Lena nodded.

“How long was I out?”

“Just twenty minutes.”

“Oh,” she stood up, stretching her arms, then twisting her neck this way and that to get the kinks out. Tom watched her, still sprawled in the same position on the sofa. When she stopped, looking around, wondering what to do now, he said, “oh, do go on,” and smiled with his tongue sticking out just barely between his teeth. Lena poked her tongue out at him and went to the kitchen. When in doubt – tea.

“What are you doing?” he was right behind her.

“Tea,” Lena said.

“I’ll get it,” he tried to step around her to reach the kettle first, putting hands on her waist to stop her movement and get her out of the way.

“I can do it,” but she stopped, let him pass. “Is this rude? Am I being rude? I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be daft,” he was filling up the kettle. After he set it to boil, he turned to her fully, trapping her against the counter with an arm on each side. Lena hooked her fingers in the loops of his jeans, pulled him closer.

“So…” he was warm and solid against her, his proximity suddenly making her throat dry, her heart race.

“So…” he copied her intonation perfectly, raising an amused eyebrow.

“You come here often?” Tom’s surprised laugh was reward enough for her lame attempt at humor.

“Every day, actually,” he said, nuzzling her neck. Lena lost her train of thought, could barely keep her breath.

“Lucky you,” she mumbled.

“Indeed,” Tom agreed, nuzzling now turned to teeth grazing just below her ear, causing her skin to burst into shivers and her mind to go completely blank.

Sitting in the back seat of the black car, Bobby held securely between them and Scott driving, Lena stared out of the window, taking in the city, her hand on Bobby’s back, Tom’s hand covering hers, their fingers scratching the dog lightly.

“Are you sure you don’t want to get a proper seat?” Tom asked for the umpteenth time. “Or go to another show?”

“I’ll stand in the back, it’s fine. Scott will keep me company. Right Scott?”

“Definitely,” the man said, catching her eye in the rearview mirror and winking.

“You can stay back in my dressing room if you want.”

“Tom,” Lena caught his eye, “it’s fine. Honestly.”

“I just want you to be comfortable. You said you don’t want to watch the play again,” he shifted his hand, pushing it underneath hers and turning it palms up, twining his fingers with hers. Lena watched, marveling at the size difference between their palms. Her hand was dwarfed in his.

“I changed my mind,” she said. “Guess I’m a masochist.”

They parked in a lot near the theatre, and Lena hung back for a few moments, letting Tom, Scott and Bobby go ahead of her. They walked at a brisk pace, Tom taking long strides. It took them seconds to almost be out of sight. Lena walked much slower, taking small, measured steps, taking the time to look around her as she walked. Even so, it was only a couple of minutes later that she’d reached the theatre entrance, walked into the warmed space and waited around, nodding at the woman in the ticket booth. Scott opened one of the doors into the theatre a minute later, spotted her and nodded at her to come in.

Lena mostly melted into the shadows, getting out of the way, letting everyone prepare for the show, do their work, go through their motions. The cast all dropped by to wish her a happy birthday, and she spent a few minutes talking to Zawe about her book, discussing women, culture and how it all made her so angry while she was reading it. She sat in the audience, Emma, the child actor playing Tom and Zawe’s daughter, sitting on her lap, and watched the rest of them warm up on the stage with a game called Big Booty. Lena wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but it was clear Tom was winning and Charlie was not amused.

“I’m having some people come over after the show,” Tom said a bit later, while she watched him change from jeans to dress pants, put his suit jacket on. “So I’ll be out late to the stage door. Are you sure you want to wait out?”

Lena nodded. She was getting excited by the prospect. She’d missed the opportunity the first time around, on account of spending her time in a much better way, and she’d missed it yesterday again, on account of jetlag and record-breaking laziness. She wasn’t going to miss it again. She wanted to feel the energy, she wanted to be part of the action. She wanted to take pictures to share with her friends without having to worry.

This time around, she was busier looking at the shadows playing on the back wall of the stage, than at the play itself. She noticed things, small nuances she hadn’t noticed the previous times, and the heavy weight of the play was easier to bear. There were no tears this time, and while the ghost of James was inevitably there, because where else could it be, it wasn’t as haunting as always. At curtain call Tom asked everyone to donate to Broadway Cares, and Lena made her way out the doors and outside into the cold.

It was so cold that when Zawe stopped by to sign playbills in her area, she’d dropped her pen twice because she couldn’t feel her fingers. Lena dropped her playbill for the same reason. Charlie, for some reason, thought that 2C is acceptable temperature for a sweatshirt and no hat. Lena grew colder just looking at him. It was so cold that by the time Tom came out, nearly an hour later, after the main lights of the theater had been shut off and they stood under nothing but the streetlights, Lena was shaking so bad she couldn’t actually control it.

Scott was being a tyrant, not letting Tom sign anything that wasn’t a playbill unless a donation was given into the Red Bucket. One of the girls nearby Lena wanted to get a photo signed, but didn’t have any money on her. Tom was about to move on, having stood in their area for a good ten minutes, signing a stack of playbills and chatting, and Lena could see the girl was getting frantic.

“Hold on,” she reached to her wallet, pulled out a couple of bills and put them in the bucket, telling Scott, “this is for her.”

Scott smiled, actually smiled, allowing Tom to sign the picture, and Tom winked at her before moving down the line. On his way back taking selfies, he stood an extra second by her to make sure the photo she took was a good one.

Getting home was a stealthy operation just like getting to the theatre had been. Lena walked back to the parking lot, where a driver was already in the car, waiting to bring it to the theatre. She sat at the far end of the back seat, hidden from sight as much as possible, while they drove and then waited for a minute until Tom and Bobby came out and got in. Lena settled with her head on Tom’s chest once they drove away, too exhausted to hold her head up.

“Alright?” he asked. Lena nodded.


	10. Wicked Game

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title Song -  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhfE149aYY0

The spotlight was on the stage, some of the dancers already on, doing their part of the routine. Lena stood in the wings, in jeans and a t-shirt, and watched the pre-teen girls go through the motions. She’d danced this dance before. A long time ago, when she was little.

“Lena you have to go on,” her dance teacher materialized by her side, frantic.

“What?”

“For the solo. You have to go on.”

“Why?”

“Because Sarah didn’t show. You know the part,” she tapped a hand on her back, “back straight, stomach in, shoulders down, smile on. Go.” A hand pushed her forward.

It was an easy thing to fall into the old routine, muscle memory took over and the moves flowed of their own accord. The hard part was ignoring the faces in the crowd, or the blinding glare of the stage light. Somehow, even through the glare she could see every single face, and it held everyone she’d known. All her friends from work. All her classmates from the years of schooling. People she went to military with. And front row center – Tom, James and her ex-boyfriend, a row of tall, blue-eyed, fair-skinned men, all sitting next to each other staring at her. Watching her go through a 20-year-old routine she still remembered and was equally bad at as an adult as she had been as a child. Possibly more.

It was still dark outside when Lena woke up, which was no surprise at all. The surprise was when she turned around and found Tom awake as well.

“Why do you have such shit dreams?”

Lena chuckled, “I’ve got issues?”

“You had that nice dream when you were flying last time…” he shifted, wrapping an arm around her and dragging her with him to lay on top of him. “Why don’t you have one of those again?”

“I like the way you think,” she smiled, planting a short kiss on his lips, then trailing kisses down his chin, throat, chest.

It was easier this time around, his body more familiar, her own remembering the dance much better now that it’s had some practice. They’ve found their rhythm, their form, their own choreography. It came as a pleasant surprise to both of them when they realized Lena enjoyed him taking control, and Lena’s heart raced as he held her down, hands pressed tight against the mattress, his voice whispering commands in her ear.

It was still racing afterwards, her breath coming in hard, her body too heavy to move an inch, as she laid curled by his side, tracing circles with her fingers around his nipples, watching the little hairs on his chest shine in the dim light coming into the dark room through the crack in the curtains. It was still dark outside as well, Lena knew, but New York never slept, and the lamps, billboard signs and cars, never slept with it.

“Still scared?” Lena didn’t expect the question again.

“Terrified,” she said. That hasn’t changed.

“Tell me why,” there was the slightest change in the tone of his voice. No longer a simple request, now a command.

Lena considered it for a long moment, running the scenarios in her head. Saying nothing at all, a quiet defiance, but to what end? Just to prove a point, that he couldn’t tell her what to do? Prove that point to who? Not to herself, she knew well enough exactly what was within her control and what wasn’t. And she was confident enough that he knew, as well, that whatever control he had was only as much as she was willing to give. Lie? That was just out of the question. He didn’t deserve that from her. She didn’t want to be that person.

Just tell him.

The real problem was figuring out the answer, or rather, articulating it into coherent sentences.

“I’m scared because I really like you,” she said after a while. “I’m scared because people always leave, because this, what we’re doing here, has a very close expiration date.” She took a breath, “I’m scared I go on that plane on Sunday and never see you again. I’m scared of the fact that scares me. I’m scared I’m doomed to forever find myself in the same situations, over and over and over again. I can’t seem to learn the lesson. I know how this ends. I’ve been here before,” paused. “No, not exactly here. It’s like… the setting is different, but the essence is the same. And I know how this ends. And I don’t like it at all, and it scares me.”

He kissed her hair and was silent for a few breaths.

“I’m scared of whatever it is you’re going to say,” Lena added into the quiet of the room.

“Should I not say it then?” he asked, shifting down and to his side, so that he could look at her.

“Say it,” she said, taking a breath and bracing herself. The curiosity would kill her otherwise, she knew.

“That book of yours,” he started, and Lena groaned, mentally kicking herself. It was a mistake reading it, it was a mistake quoting it to Tom. It was a mistake letting him read it. It was about to backfire on her spectacularly, she just knew it. “No, let me rephrase,” he said, catching her reaction. “It’s not the book. It’s that guy.”

“James,” Lena supplied the name.

“James,” Tom repeated. “He haunts your dreams, you love him,” he didn’t ask. It was a statement of fact to him. Lena wasn’t quite sure it was a statement of fact to her, as much as it was a habit.

She wanted to say, _that’s not true_. She wanted to say, _he has nothing to do with this_. Those were lies, though. Lies she’d told herself, but she didn’t want to tell them out loud to Tom. So what she said was, “I don’t really know him anymore.”

“But you think that spending time with me is going to end up in the same heartache?”

“I know it,” it was already happening, at that very moment. Having this conversation she didn’t really want to have. Having the clock ticking away their time together. Time slipping away.

“Why?”

“Because I always want what I can’t have.”

Her heart raced while he considered her answer. She was so stupid. Thank god she’d kept the hotel room. Somewhere to go where she could wallow in her misery now that whatever it was she built inside her head, which inevitably wasn’t the same thing Tom had in mind, was crumbling around her.

“What is it that you want, then?”

“To go back to sleep,” that was an easy one.

Tom chuckled, “and for the non-immediate future?”

“I don’t know,” Lena said. He waited, looking at her, blue eyes pressing heavier and heavier until she broke and spoke again, “spend time with you. Not have shit dreams about James anymore. I don’t want to become Leo Gorski,” she said, reverting back to the book. It was an easy parallel to make. “He can’t be my Alma.”

A breath, and Lena asked a question, hoping she was ready to hear the answer for it, “what do _you_ want?”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“But what do you _want_?”

“To take things as they come and see what happens.”

“Okay,” Lena said, nodding. “We can do that.”

She rolled away, holding his hand in hers and wrapping his arm around her body, pressing her back into his front, tucking his fist under her chin. She tried to match her breathing to his, the rising of his chest against her back a clear indication of the rhythm, and blinked away the tears that welled up in her eyes. It was her failure to match breath with his, her ragged breaths that refused to subside and slow, that gave her away.

Tom took a breath, swallowed, whispered “do you want to go?”

“No. Do you want me to go?” Lena held her breath, waiting for his answer, steeling herself for it.

His arm around her tightened, pressing her closer, “No.” He pulled on her shoulder, trying to get her to turn around. Lena resisted, holding his hand tighter, wishing him to stop. “Lena,” he tried again, “please turn around.”

She took a deep breath, then another, then rolled over to face him, but didn’t have it in her to look higher than his Adam’s apple, bobbing up and down his throat as he swallowed. He tilted her chin up, trapped her in the blue of his eyes, now grey in the darkness.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said again.

“Then don’t.”

“You’re crying,” his thumb brushed her cheek, drying it.

Lena shrugged, “that’s not your fault.”

“No?” he raised an eyebrow.

“No,” Lena confirmed. “I’m perfectly capable of hurting myself.”

He chuckled, “you should probably stop that.”

“Can we just go back to sleep please?”

“And you’ll sleep?” that damn eyebrow again. It was starting to get on Lena’s nerves.

“Maybe. It doesn’t matter. Look, we’re taking things as they come, yes?” Tom nodded. “Well that’s that, then. I’m scared of everything, always. I still came here. And I’ll stay for as long as you want me to. And I get to cry sometimes, it’s just how it is.”

More than anything, Lena was proud of her voice not breaking throughout the speech. The last thing she needed was her voice breaking.

The corner of his mouth lifted just a little, “I get to hug you when you cry, though, right?”

“What else are you here for?” she snuggled closer, burrowing her nose into his chest.

“You have the weirdest dreams,” Tom put a plate of scrambled eggs in front of her, and Lena reached for the salad bowl she’d cut earlier, pouring half on her plate by the eggs. He sat down across from her with his own plate, eggs and bacon and fried tomatoes, and some of her salad. She had a mug of tea steaming by her side, Tom had a glass of orange juice and a double espresso shot.

“Do I?” she didn’t quite remember what she’d dreamed about after their talk earlier that morning. Perhaps that was for the best. It was a little disturbing that he remembered, though. “I don’t remember.”

“It was a building across the street from a beach, with a flat on the last floor. I think you were trying to buy it?” his hair, still wet from the shower he took earlier, fell on his forehead and he brushed it back.

“Oh, that’s the first apartment we lived in when I was little,” Lena nodded. She dreamed about that building the most out of all the places she’d lived in since. Sometimes she wondered who lived there now, and how the apartment would look like to her if she visited it as an adult. A lot smaller, probably. She hadn’t set foot there since she was eleven years old.

“What’s the plan for today?” Tom asked, piling eggs on his fork.

“I’m meeting my cousin and her husband for lunch at noon, near the theatre. Then we’re catching Phantom of the Opera, and that’s about it.”

He nodded, chewing on a mouthful of food. After a moment he spoke, “Sightseeing after?”

Lena shook her head, “I thought I’d just hang backstage if that’s ok?”

“You know it is.”

Lena had to admit, the food was delicious. They were sitting in the Italian restaurant her cousin has chosen for lunch, just a few minutes away from the theatre. It was a strange place, the walls full of caricatures of celebrities. Lena studied the ones on the wall by their table, recognizing a few faces. She tried not to balk at the price of the food when the menu was presented, and reminded herself that she was, in fact, making enough money to splurge on a fancy meal. The conversation was a bit strange. What do you talk about with people you normally meet once every few years, and have very little in common with? Luckily for her, Julia and Luke were actually a chatty couple, and somehow the conversation flowed. Talking about life, school, work, plans. Lena felt oddly like an adult when she paused to take in the situation.

The musical ended up being entirely… ordinary. Maybe it was her unreasonable expectation of greatness, or her exhaustion, or the fact she didn’t manage to use the restrooms and spent the entire 2nd half fantasizing about a toilet seat, but Lena ended up being unimpressed with Phantom of the Opera.

After the show and saying goodbye, she stopped by the bakery near the theatre and got a bunch of takeaway cakes, then texted Tom to tell him she’s coming in. One of the staff let her in, having been altered of her arrival.

“No!” Tom said, eyes widening, when he saw she was carrying a box from the bakery, but his smile widened as well. They shared a slice, leaving the rest for cast and crew on a snacks table downstairs, then settled in his dressing room.

“Do you want to do something tonight?” he asked, sitting on the chair and pulling her down to sit on his lap. Lena settled there easily, wrapping her hands around his neck.

“Just hang,” she said, nestling her nose in the crook of his neck, taking a deep breath and trying to commit the smell to memory.

“I’d like that.”

They went to the hotel first, where Lena gave up on all pretense of coming back and checked out, taking her small suitcase with her. Tom waited for her in the car, staying out of sight. Then she sat with her head on his shoulder, Bobby on her lap, for the twenty-minute ride to his apartment. They drove in silence, Lena staring at their joined hands on his lap. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a clock was ticking, counting back the minutes.

He brewed tea while she showered, and she came out, dressed in checkered pajama pants and an oversized T-shirt, to find him waiting for her on the sofa, the tea just the right temperature. She curled at his side with the mug wrapped between her palms. There was music in the background, something ambient, with a post-rock feeling to it.

“The smell of your shampoo is going to haunt me when you’re gone,” Tom said, burying his nose in her hair.

“Everything about you is going to haunt me when I’m gone,” the steam from the tea clouded her glasses, throwing the room into a fog for a few seconds.

“Like what?”

“Like…” was he fishing for compliments? Him? She took a moment, arranging the answer into something coherent inside her head before saying it out loud. “Like the way it feels to rest my head on your shoulder,” she said, “like the smell of your skin right here,” she shifted, burying her nose in the crook of his shoulder again, where traces of his soap and aftershave still lingered under the smell of _him_. “Like the way your beard scratches,” she added. “And just how high I need to look up to look into your eyes.”

He turned, captured her lips in his, “you’re really quite poetic sometimes, you know that?”

Lena shrugged, “thank you?”

“So tell me,” he put down his mug, pulled her until she sat on his lap rather than next to it, “you’ve pictured this weekend, yes?” Lena nodded. Of course she had. She’d run hundreds of different scenarios for this weekend in her head just on the flight over. “What haven’t we done yet?”

“Huh?”

“What did you imagine we’d be doing this weekend?”

“Oh,” Lena said, “well, sex, obviously,” he grinned and she could feel her skin growing warm, “and we covered the joined shower the other night already.”

“Which should in no way stop us from doing it again.”

“Of course,” she agreed. “A walk in the park. That’s not gonna happen. I don’t know. Movies, food, hanging out, dancing, sleeping, laughing. I didn’t actually plan it all out.”

“No?” he raised an eyebrow.

“Well not for the entire weekend, just moments, you know?”

He shook his head, “I really don’t, but I find it fascinating that you do that. Finish your tea,” he reached for his own mug, drinking deeply. Lena copied him, drinking her own tea.

When they were both done, he set Lena on her feet and stood up, pulling her around the small coffee table and onto the carpet. Tom lifted her arms, resting them on his shoulders, and wrapped his own arms around her waist, pulling her close until their bodies pressed tight against each other. The music was slow and hypnotic, and Tom swayed, swaying Lena with him.

“I know it’s not waltzing on the roof…” he whispered.

“Shut up,” Lena whispered back, “it’s perfect.”

He did as she was told, and they swayed in silence until the end of the song. The next one had a faster beat, and rather than swaying together, they actually danced, Tom twirling Lena this way and that, leading her around the room, laughing and catching her when she stumbled, slowly leading the way from living room to bedroom.

She couldn’t stop looking at him. The room was pitch dark, he’d drawn the curtains, leaving nothing but a crack, saying it’ll help her sleep better. There was nothing for her to look at but a dark grey outline in a darker grey room, but she couldn’t stop looking at him. She stared, lines from a song stuck on repeat in her mind. She made no attempt to close her eyes and sleep. She’d have time enough to sleep sometime, on the plane, or when she got home, or when she was dead. Right now, she was busy committing to memory the outline of Tom in the darkness. Right now, she was busy making sure the song stayed firmly in her head and didn’t suddenly come out of her mouth, waking him up. That would be awkward. Right now, she was busy ignoring the ticking clock in the back of her mind.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

She didn’t know how the rest of it went. She should ask Tom; she was sure he knew. But it was creeping on them. The moment she’d give in and sleep, it would come that much faster.

Tomorrow.


	11. Stay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been impossibly hard to write, which is why it took me a long time and now I'm posting without a read-through so please excuse any weird typos etc. Writing's a bit different as well, since the only way I could see this chapter is through the moments of the day that stuck with Lena, and nothing else.
> 
> Please listen to the song, it's important for this chapter -  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_fNplJfh00
> 
> I hope they'll be back soon, but it's been getting harder and harder to write, so maybe I'll just end it here. We'll see.  
> Thanks all.

The furious clicking of fingernails on keyboard filled the room as Lena sat on the floor, back against the bed, her laptop on the footstool she’d relocated from the corner of the room, a black charging cable running across the floor to an adapter plugged into the opposite wall. The muted light from the screen fell on her face, the only source of light in the room. Lena chewed on her bottom lip and clicked away, setting meetings, replying to email, filing completed tasks in their relevant folders. She opened an urgent purchase order and texted with the facilities rep finalizing details for a lunch spread that needed to be set up tomorrow while she’d be flying.

Then a text from her manager came through and Lena groaned, rolling her eyes, unplugging the laptop and going to the living room to make a phone call. It only took a few minutes to get the issue sorted, thankfully, and she was back in the room right after.

“You sound so sexy when you speak other languages,” Tom greeted her, lying on his back, stretching his arms over his head.

“באמת?” Lena asked, setting the computer back on the footstool.

“Now stop working and get back to bed, it’s the bloody weekend.” He lifted the covers, motioning for her to get in.

“Not where I come from.”

“A truly horrible place,” he said, tucking the blanket around her as she settled in. It was warm, and only then Lena had realized how cold she’d been until then.

“Yes,” she agreed, snuggling closer, “the worst. פשוט נורא.”

“Mmm…” he rolled towards her, pressing his lips against her forehead, “tell me more.”

“It’s disgustingly hot most of the year,” Lena started.

“Noooo… in a sexy language…”

“חם ומגעיל רוב השנה,” she said, giggling, “ועובדים בימי ראשון, שזה מעצבן. ו... אני לא יודעת מה אתה רוצה שאני אגיד לך עוד"

“Perfect,” he purred.

“What are you looking at?” there was a tiny little puzzle that made up the skin on the back of her hand that swallowed everything, making the rest of the world disappear. There were just tiny dots, and tiny lines, and tiny spots of a slightly darker shade of skin spread throughout, like freckles except they weren’t. There was one tiny brown circle, a birthmark. There was the small scab left from bumping her knuckle against something, she didn’t even remember what.

“I’m old,” she said.

Tom snorted, “what am I, then?”

Lena shrugged, tearing her eyes away from her own skin and focusing on his. The veins standing out on the back of his hand, the one knuckle that appeared to be permanently-red, skin rough and drying, the fine hairs, the same endless pattern of thin lines and tiny dots interconnecting to create the puzzle of his skin, or maybe it wasn’t a puzzle, maybe it was a map, the same occasional patches of a slightly darker skin tone that wasn’t freckles. “You’re older,” she said.

The laptop was on the floor by the wall, the suitcase was lying open in the passage between the bed in the wall, the clothes from inside were on the bed, folded in small piles, and music was playing from Lena’s phone on the bedside table. The song was the worst possible thing she could’ve put on, but she couldn’t stop listening to it on repeat. She put the folded clothes into the suitcase, adjusting the fit and shoving the bag with dirty laundry in a gap. She topped everything with her bag of toiletries, and was done just in time for breakfast.

“Come,” Tom said, popping his head in the door. He paused, tilted his head slightly at the sound of the music. He listened to the lyrics for a few seconds, then his eyes focused on Lena, blue trapping brown in a prison of emotion she wasn’t quite ready to deal with. It was a small gesture, a slight opening of the arms, but it was enough. A heartbeat later Lena was pressed against his chest, his chin on top of her head. Eyes closed tight and the guitar solo in the background strumming the strings of her heart, pulling her nerves apart one by one.

It was absurdly cold outside, by any measure of temperature Lena was familiar with. She bundled up in her coat, her colorful scarf covering most of her face, her woolen hat pulled low, all the way down to her glasses. Her face was reduced to spectacled eyes and a red, sniffing nose. It wasn’t even meant as a disguise, it was just the only reasonable way to deal with the cold. By her side, Tom wore his regular black overcoat, neck turned up, and a baseball hat. Not even a scarf. Nor a pair of gloves, even though he was holding Bobby’s lead in his hand rather than attaching it to his belt like he did when he was running. Lena grew colder just looking at him.

He led the way in the park, long, fast strides that got them off the main paths and into hidden routes between the trees where hardly anyone walked by.

“Autumn here is so pretty,” Lena said, snapping a few photos of the colorful leaves on the trees, of a sea of yellow and orange covering the ground, of a solitary bright orange leaf carried on the breeze across the tarmac. It was often the solitary leaves blowing in the wind that made her think there was so much beauty in the world. It was also raindrops on a window, the smell of rain and sound of thunder, and very recently, the play of light on a specific man’s beard. Said man was speaking to her, and Lena even had the presence of mind to respond, although her mind barely registered the things he said, too preoccupied with the music of his words.

The elevator door closed, and Tom put his hand on the small of Lena’s back, stepping close and pulling her closer to him. The first touch since they’d left his apartment. It was strange how one could miss something without knowing what it is, until it was suddenly there again.

Leaving was going to be the opposite of fun.

Tom made a salad from the leftover pasta, adding a bit of vegetables and a can of tuna into the mix. Lena mashed an avocado on top of toasted bread, sprinkled it with salt and a bit of pepper, squeezed a wedge of lemon on top. He put Queen to play in the background, and it was enough to almost distract Lena from the song stuck on a loop inside her head. She picked at her food, hardly tasting it.

“I know what you want,” Tom said, clearing up their plates, tongue stuck between his teeth for a moment. There was only a brief frown directed at her nearly full plate and half-chewed toast.

Leftover cake, a pot of hot tea.

Lena smiled, “you know me,” and the truth of it punched her in the gut. This man. This man who she’d spent less than a week with altogether, this man who she’d only known for a couple of months, knew her better than-

Better than the other one.

She reached for the tea, used the teaspoon to cut off a bit of the cake, wondered, as she chewed, whether she knew him just as well. Probably not.

“I don’t think I know you the same,” she said after a moment.

“You know me well enough,” Tom said, sipping his own tea.

Another car, another ride, another driver. Scott was meeting them at the theatre. The street outside passed in a blur of motion and unshed tears. It felt like she ran out of words to say, so she sat in silence, head leaning against Tom’s shoulder, his hand on her thigh the most important thing in the world. How many car rides have they shared? Lena tried to count, but her memory was failing her. That first night, after Moulin Rouge. And then again. When was the second time? Why did it even matter?

“You alright?” barely audible, for her ears only.

Lena shook her head, “I don’t want to go.”

“I wish you could stay,” Tom said, and she wondered whether he was echoing the song on purpose or by coincidence.

The first notes of the Enjoy the Silence cover filled the theatre and a hush fell on the room. Lena leaned against the barrier at the back of the orchestra, settling for the show. One last time. The curtain rose, and there they were – a masterpiece of light and shadow and actors. She was too far back to properly see, but she thought he looked right at her for a moment, before he got up and walked to the corner of the stage, tumbler of not-whiskey in hand.

_I don’t have to think of you._

The tears came again, silent and constant, from the moment Charlie delivered his line and until the end of the show. Even in the funny parts, her eyes glistened. And in the parts that weren’t funny it was an effort to keep the tears silent. Scott kept looking over at her, and Lena dabbed at her eyes, took long, calming breaths. She didn’t want to draw attention, didn’t want to make a scene. He came closer, nudged her with his shoulder, his expression somehow managing to convey both sympathy and give her strength. He was a good man, Scott. Lena thought that if they spent more time together, they could easily be some kind of friends.

He was in his dressing room when Lena made it backstage, the suit jacket already on a hanger, pants halfway down as she walked in.

“Come in, come in,” Tom said, working his way out of the pants and into his pair of dark grey jeans. Lena walked in quickly, closing the door behind her to give him his privacy back. She knew from her own childhood of dancing and backstage, that artists often had to change right on the sides of the stage, without any kind of privacy at all, and cared very little about it. But this wasn’t the high-stress situation of a 60-second changing window, this was his own dressing room, after the show, and he deserved his privacy. So she closed the door quickly and leaned against it, almost averting her eyes. Almost, because she’d seen it all before, and because god only knew when she’d see it again.

She waited until he was fully dressed, then went to him, wrapping her arms around his middle and clinging, trying to breathe. The tears were still there. God, who had she become? He put his arms around her and took a step back, settling into the chair with her across his lap, and now her face fit perfectly into the crook of his neck.

“Sorry,” she mumbled against his skin, taking a deep breath, “I just need a minute.”

His arms tightened around her, “I need two,” he said.

In the other room, on the sofa, it was a lot more comfortable to sit wrapped around each other and mope at her upcoming departure. The voices from the hallway outside penetrated their little bubble but didn’t fully register. Charlie was saying something about plans with his daughter Elsie; the little girl who played Charlotte in today’s show was running around, laughing with Eddie. The door to the room opened, bringing the noise level up, and Scott peeked in, Tom shook his head, the man nodded and left. Lena paid it all very little mind. Her brain was stuck on a loop.

_I don’t want this day to ever end._

_I don’t want this day to ever end._

_I don’t want this day to ever end._

I don’t have to think of you.

_And now it’s my turn to leave, I’ll see you again someday, and I wish that I could stay._

“You grow quiet when you get sad,” Tom said, brushing his fingers through her hair. He undid her bun, her scrunchie now wrapped around his wrist.

“Yeah,” Lena said, “my head fills up with all these things that shouldn’t be said out loud.”

“Why not?”

“There’s a time and a place,” she shrugged, recalling something someone had said to her once. Someone who had no business being in this room with them right now.

“Here and now?” he offered, raising an eyebrow. Lena chuckled and he smiled, which in turn made her smile as well.

She let the silence build and stretch before she spoke again, “I’ve decided I’m going to adopt the Oscar Wilde approach to life,” Lena said, sitting up a bit straighter.

“Oh?”

She nodded, “yielding to temptation, no regrets, that sort of thing,” she’d been reading his quotes earlier when they were warming up. “He said some things are more precious because they don’t last long.”

“He also said quotation is a serviceable substitute of wit,” Tom retorted, grinning at her.

Lena raised an eyebrow, “was that an insult, Hiddleston?”

“I wouldn’t dare,” but his eyes glinted, his tongue peeked between his teeth and he looked way too pleased at himself for pulling that particular quote out of thin air. The smug bastard. She took a breath, stood up, reached for his hand to pull him up, “come on, you need to do stage door.”

“Oh, we cancelled already.”

Lena stared, “what?”

“Cancelled,” Tom said, taking her hand and pulling her, “come back here.”

“What do you mean? Why?”

“Because I’d rather be here.”

“But-“

“And Charlie had plans.”

Lena sat back down, her mind still whirling around this new plot twist, “you cancelled stage door for me,” she said, hoping that saying it out loud would somehow make it sound less crazy to her. It didn’t.

“Yes,” he nodded. “Now come back here,” he pulled to sit on his lap again, wrapped his arms around her waist, “tell me a story in a foreign language.”

“What have you got there?” Tom came back carrying two Starbucks cups and a box from the bakery next door to the theatre. Lena wondered whether he went himself or asked someone else. He was gone long enough for it to go either way. He placed the cup holder on the table and took the cups out, then placed the cake next to them. He sure did knew his way to a girl’s heart.

Lena turned her head to look at him over her shoulder, as he was looking at her notebook, hovering above her. “Just writing.”

“It says Dear Tom at the top,” he noted.

Lena shrugged, “just writing to you.”

“Am I supposed to read it?”

“Not really, no.”

“Can I anyway?”

“Sure,” she handed him the notebook, “which one is mine?” he pushed one of the cups towards her, already distracted by her writing. It wasn’t really something she expected him to read, but she didn’t mind. It was just her thoughts, random and scattered, which she tried to put into some order before she left. It helped to write it down. She’d started the day she landed back home after her previous trip, writing down things she wanted to say but couldn’t at the time. Most of them she’d said later on when they talked, but having written them down they made more sense, and the words she chose in conversation came easier, her thoughts more organized. The one he was reading, the one she started this morning, wasn’t nearly as organized. A list of things she wanted to say to him as he slept. Things she’d never wake him up for. Things she could say to him when he was awake, but the timing just wasn’t right.

He flipped a page and his eyes shot up, “did you do this?” he turned the page towards her, showing her an image of him, a pencil sketch of his sleeping profile. A quick and sloppy job done with the one pencil she’d brought with her just in case.

“Yeah,” Lena said.

“Wow,” Tom turned to look at it again, “I didn’t know you could do that.”

Lena shrugged, “sometimes.”

Another car. She hated this one. It was the same one that’s been driving her around the entire weekend, but unlike the happy sight it’s been when she’d landed in JFK on Thursday night, it was now the most hated thing in the world to her. And she was sitting in it, letting it take her back to JFK.

The car didn’t matter. The city lights rushing past in the darkness outside the window didn’t matter. Nothing mattered other than the man who was sharing the car with her, sitting pressed at her side, his hand holding hers.

“What are you going to do in London?” Tom asked.

“My friend’s meeting me there, we’re just going to walk around, hang out. I’ve only got eight hours or so.”

“Lovely,” he said. “I hope you have a good time.”

“Oh I will, I love London.”

“Me too,” he smiled. “You should come sometime when I’m there.”

“I should,” Lena agreed, the stone that’s been lodged in her stomach suddenly dissolving into a horde of butterflies. She wondered whether that was the correct word – horde. Probably not. But they felt like a horde alright, Mongolian warrior butterflies, turning her stomach into their own private battlefield of hope.

When the car stopped by the British Airways gates, Tom put his hand on her thigh, stopping her movement towards the door, his other hand moved to the back of her neck, pulling her close, and his lips locked with hers. He kissed her deeply and thoroughly, until she had no breath left, until her mind lost any train of thought it held, until even the damned song stopped looping in her mind. Then he kissed her just a bit more.

“Fly safe, Lena,” he said, pulling her close.

“I’ll text you when I land.”

He put his nose to her hair, took a deep breath, “I miss you already,” he whispered.

Lena swallowed the lump in her throat, it fell right on the butterflies in her stomach, smashing them, “me too,” she said.


	12. Midnight City

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not King Lear, nor did I actually write this during quarantine (we're just working from home now, quarantine is basically lifted where I am). But it's here, and it is what it is.  
> Thank you Ivorynia for the ideas that planted the seeds for this.  
> Title Song:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX3k_QDnzHE

She was standing at Heathrow Airport, waiting for her turn at border control, absentmindedly looking at the other people in line, when she realised that she’d made a big, terrible mistake. She realised it as her eyes focused on a hand. A man’s hand, resting casually on the shoulder of the woman standing next to him. Such a small gesture. Something she’d never have, not with Tom. There will be no casual touching at the airport, or anywhere else in public. There will be no waiting in line at border control together. Going on holiday, coming home… there will be none of that. At best, there would be solo-flights for brief encounters. Perhaps a summer holiday where they meet up at the destination because they didn’t even live in the same country. There will be her, always worrying about the money because no matter how much she made, how comfortable she felt she lived, it didn’t come close to what he could afford. There will be her, refusing his gifts. It was a bold assumption that there would be any gifts to refuse. Lena made it anyway, as she took another step down the snaking line, and slid further down the spiral of her thoughts.

By the time she’d gotten herself home nearly 24 hours later, exhausted from hours of walking through London, lack of sleep, and overthinking, she’d resolved to talk to him. To call the whole thing off. Whatever the thing was. If there even was a thing. The tears that rolled down her cheeks in the shower were part exhaustion. But only part.

She wrote it down. The points she wanted to make, the things she wanted to say. She wrote it down, over and over and over again, trying to figure out what was important, what wasn’t. She had the conversation in her mind hundreds of times before he called her late that evening. None of the scenarios in her head matched what actually happened. _The Speech_ , as she’d dubbed it in her mind, was forgotten as soon as she heard his voice. The notebook with the points lay closed on her bedside table.

“I lied,” she’d said. “I can’t take things as they come. I just… I don’t see how this can be-“ she didn’t even finish the sentence. It didn’t matter what it could be. She couldn’t see it happening. “It’s going to drive me insane,” Lena said instead, “and I don’t deserve to spend another decade stuck on yet another man I can’t have.”

“OK,” Tom said, very quietly, on the other end of the line. “I understand. I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

And that was that.

Life took over Lena’s days, much as it had before her two weekend getaways to New York. The only difference was that there were no longer daily WhatsApp messages from Tom, there were no phone calls. It was life as she knew it, minus three months. She dived into it without much pause. There were purchase orders for the second half of the year to open. There were reports to prepare, meetings to set, winter gifts for the team to choose, brand, buy. There was the corresponding Happy Hour to plan. It was still over a month away, but Lena hated dealing with those kind of things, so she’d started early. There was her dog to take on walks, her friends to try and meet up with, a ridiculous backlog of TV shows to watch and an even larger backlog of books to read through. She’d set those aside, her heart just wasn’t in. Instead of going through her TV backlog, she started re-watching old shows she’d already seen. Instead of reading her books, she read fanfiction about said TV shows. She just didn’t have the bandwidth to give books, and Lena was a firm believer that books deserved her at her best.

Lena tried not to stop long enough to think about it, about Tom, but there was only so far she could run from her own self. Still, whenever the realisation of what she’d done caught up with her, she focused on the fact that it was the right thing to do. There was no future for them, and living in the present like he’d suggested just didn’t work for her. She needed a plan, she needed to know what was going to happen, how things were going to happen, how it all worked out. And there wasn’t one, because it didn’t all work out, because he just wanted to live in the now, because their nows didn't fit together.

She’d done the same thing James had done, many years ago. _How do you envision this to work?_ he’d asked, and she, young, naïve and willing to drop everything for him, was full of answers. None of her answers were as practical as he was. And now she was no longer that young, no longer that naïve and absolutely no longer in a position to drop everything to follow a man, whether she wanted to or not. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on her. In fact, that was the part that made her cry hardest, whenever she couldn’t stop the tears from coming. It was always the irony, the fact that goddamn James was goddamn right, and that it took her a decade to see it.

Still, knowing she’d done the right thing didn’t really make it easier. Burying herself in work didn’t make it all go away. A Neil Gaiman quote she’d read once haunted her now more than ever, proving its accuracy:

_“In a perfect world, you could fuck people without giving them a piece of your heart. And every glittering kiss and every touch of flesh is another shard of heart you’ll never see again.”_

Lena wondered how many little pieces of her heart she’d lost to Tom, was surprised to find out there was even something there to lose after James. Lesson learned.

She buried herself in work, she buried herself in life, and most of the time it was enough to tire her out so much she fell asleep immediately and slept soundly until morning, with no recollection of her dreams. Most of the time.

They varied, the dreams that she did remember. Once, she was walking with Tom across the big junction on the way to school, when he let go of her hand and ran across the busy street to play with a cat. She kept calling him, but he wouldn’t turn around, and when she crossed the street to follow him, he’d taken the cat elsewhere, never looking back. In another dream, she came to his house, which for some reason was in LA, only to find him married to Zawe, who was walking around barefoot and heavily pregnant. She was both talking to Tom and Zawe in the doorway of the house, and watching the doorway from around the corner, getting caught by a not-pregnant Zawe who was just returning home, at the same time.

They varied, but one dream would repeat itself in variations. She was walking down a street. Sometimes it was a street in London, sometimes a street in New York, sometimes the street leading to the bus stop she used to take to work before she got the car. She was walking down a street, and Tom was walking towards her. Sometimes it was the younger Tom, short brown hair, jeans and white t-shirt, suit jacket. Sometimes it was _her_ Tom, blue sweater, beard and glasses. Sometimes it was a winter day, snow crunching under her ballerina flats on a street that’s never seen snow in real life. Sometimes perfectly blue sky shone over an otherwise grey London street. But every single time, always, Tom would glance at her and keep walking, looking straight, not even acknowledging her existence. Sometimes she’d call after him, sometimes she’d turn and watch him go, sometimes she just kept walking.

In the mornings after those dreams, her sister would look at her funny, and Lena would know way too many people in her nearby vicinity dreamed the same dream. It felt like they were taking something from her, something that was meant to be hers alone. Sometimes it hurt her more than the dream itself, waking up and catching her sister looking at her with that look of hers. Part concern, part pity, part stop shoving your dreams into other people’s heads.

It was after one of those cursed dreams, the worst version of it she’d ever had, where she turned and followed Tom, calling for him, crying, and he wouldn’t turn, and she couldn’t catch up to him, that Lena woke up on the verge of tears to the sound of an incoming message.

_I would never do that. You know that, right?_

Lena stared at the message for a full two minutes before typing back her reply.

_I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you._

She hadn’t realised he was back in London already, with his nights now almost perfectly in sync with hers. She tried not to follow news of him too closely, worried it would make things worse.

_It’s OK. Are you alright?_

_Yes._

A few days later Lena’s dreams came up with a new kind of torture. She was walking from the bus stop to school, going through the big junction like always, blue jeans, black school uniform t-shirt, her blue backpack slung across one shoulder. Tom was walking alongside her, a backpack over his shoulder as well, his hand holding hers. Then he noticed the Olsen Twins across the junction. He let go of her hand, muttered “sorry,” and hurried after them. He put a hand over the shoulder of each, settling between them, and led them both into the furniture store across the junction. Lena tried to go after them, but busses kept driving by, not allowing her to cross the road. By the time she made it across they were already running late for school, but Tom wouldn’t come. He wouldn’t even turn to her when she called, engrossed in picking new living room furniture with the twins.

Lena’s ringing phone pulled her out of the dream, she reached for it without thinking, answered without looking, “Allo?”

“You have shit dreams,” a man’s voice announced on the other end of the line. Lena started, the world coming into focus. The darkness in her room, the phone at her ear, the man on the other end of the line.

“I’m sorry?” she offered.

Tom chuckled, “don’t apologise. The Olsen Twins?”

“I don’t know why…” Lena started, but didn’t finish the sentence.

There was a moment of silence. Lena shifted, turned to her other side, now facing the window. “Lena,” Tom said, the sound of her name making her throat close, stopping the air from getting to her lungs properly. “I didn’t leave you,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

“Do you?”

She nodded, realised he can’t see her, choked on the “yes.”

“Then why do you keep dreaming that I’m leaving you?”

Lena considered her answers, wondered whether it was truth or just something she’d told herself. She wasn’t quite sure, really, “everyone leaves.”

“You left,” Tom said, and now it was his voice that sounded choked. “Not I.”

“You would have left eventually.”

“You know that?” no longer choked, his tone changed slightly to something she couldn’t quite place.

“I don’t know anything anymore,” Lena admitted. That one was true enough.

The silence stretched again. She wondered whether she should say something, but didn’t know what to say.

“We should talk,” Tom said when Lena was about to suggest they hang up.

“We are talking.”

“Not like this, we should properly talk,” he said. “I thought you wanted this. But you’re having nightmares, and I wasn’t the one who left,” Tom added. “So we should talk.”

“…okay?”

“I’ll come over,” he said, “we’ll talk properly.”

“Come over?”

“Yes, I’ll talk to Luke in the morning and have it arranged.”

“Come over _here_?” Lena clarified.

Tom laughed, “yes, that’s what I said.”

She swallowed. Well, that was unexpected. “When?”

“This weekend,” he said. “I’ll see about flights and let you know. Unless you have plans?”

Lena choked, somewhere between tears and laughter, not quite sure where exactly, “no plans,” she confirmed.

“It’s settled then. Now get some sleep.”

“Okay,” she said.

There was no more sleep that night, of course. Lena tossed and turned in bed just over an hour, until her alarm rang and she dragged herself out of bed, cursing herself, Tom, the CVP visit that meant she had to drive nearly two hours in traffic to the main office instead of working from the one closer to home, her dreams, life, the universe and everything. She spent the drive to the office sipping coffee from the cup in the holder, singing along to the radio and not cursing a single one of the drivers who drove as if the road belonged to their parents, and they were the only people on it.


	13. I Want You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title Song:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_0yaRVLeJ8  
> (this is my favourite version because it has Heath Ledger's narration).

The Mediterranean Sea stretched to Lena’s right, water turning from dark near the shore to darker towards the horizon, reflecting just barely the purple-pink of the sky at dawn. Lena sipped from her cup of coffee, trying to not take her eyes off the road. It was far too early to be driving into the main office, but it was the last day of their Corporate Vice President visit, and his meetings started at 8:30 that morning, which meant Lena had to be in the office by 8, to check the conference room was all set up and have a chance to have a sandwich and a cup of tea in the peace and quiet of the early morning, before everyone showed up.

She wasn’t quite sure how she was going to make it through the day. There were too many moving parts, too many people coming and going, a logistical nightmare. And on top of it all, Tom was landing in the afternoon. A panicky rock lodged itself in Lena’s stomach, and she swallowed another sip of coffee, letting the bitter liquid flow around it. It did nothing to dissolve it, though.

The road was in her favour. She’d left the house so early – awake since the early hours and unable to go back to sleep – that she managed to beat traffic. Lena was parking her car in the underground parking lot by 7:42 in the morning. She turned the engine off and sat, staring at the wall in front of her, taking deep breaths. She could do this. She had managed this visit the whole week with only a few minor glitches. Tom was coming pretty much when the whole thing was over. Worlds weren’t going to collide and overlap. She’ll manage her challenges one after another, as they came in, and she’ll make it through the day.

Item number one on the agenda – conference room check, then breakfast. Lena took another deep breath, took the key out of her car’s ignition and got out. On the bright side of everything – it was Thursday. Only a full day until the official weekend.

Her quiet time was over at exactly 8:16, when she heard the voice of the CVP and his team in the elevator lobby, making their way towards the conference room.

“Morning,” she popped her head through the door, acknowledging everyone in the room.

“Morning!” the CVP was unproportionally cheery for someone who was still jet-lagged, but Lena knew the problem will be after lunch. That’s when she’ll need to make sure he’s caffeinated, or things might take a turn sideways.

Throughout the day, Lena has managed to lose track of time while keeping a tight eye on the clock. Guests were picked up from reception and ushered to the meeting room, other guests escorted out. She made the rounds between her team’s offices to make sure people were ready for their meetings, managed to find time for small talk she remembered nothing of the moment she stopped talking, met with the food vendor who brought in their lunch, set up the lunch in one conference room while meetings were taking place in the next. Still, whenever she looked at the clock, she was be surprised at the time. It passed unexpectedly, in jerks and bursts and random skips that made no sense.

Then her phone buzzed and made her jump, she looked at the caller ID and stopped in the middle of the hallway. Tom. In all her focus on keeping the CVP visit on track, she’d almost forgotten. She knew it was coming, but later. Much later.

Later was now.

“Allo?” she walked the few steps down the hall and into her manager’s office. He wasn’t there, of course. His place was at the CVP’s side in all his meetings.

“Hi,” Lena could almost hear the smile in his voice.

“Hi,” she answered. “You landed already?” she took the phone away from her ear to glance at the time. They were ahead of schedule.

“Yes, just taxiing now.”

“Ok, you should have someone pick you up right at the sleeve.”

“Alright, they know where I need to go?”

“Yes, they have the hotel details and everything. Don’t worry.” Lena had arranged the same VIP airport service she did for the CVP. “I got this under control,” she said.

“Are you still at the office?”

“Yes, the CVP gets picked up at five thirty, so I’ll be able to leave right after.”

“Okay. I’ll see you soon.”

“See you soon.”

Lena was just about to make yet another attempt to go to the bathroom – all her attempts had been foiled since morning, because either something came up, guests needed escort, coffee needed to be brought up or someone just caught her in the hallway with a question – when her mobile rang again. It was the reception this time. For a panicky moment as she answered, Lena tried to figure out who was still meant to come in to meet with the CVP. There was nothing she could think of.

“ _Lena? There’s a guest for you at the reception_ ,” Rotem, the receptionist, said without much of a preamble.

“ _OK, tell them two minutes, I’m coming down_.” Not before she went to the goddamn bathroom, though. There was only so much a girl could take.

She saw him the moment she walked around the corner to the reception area. He was sitting in the corner, half-hidden by a pole, his back turned to the lobby, looking out the huge glass wall to the street outside. A carry-on and a backpack rested on the floor next to him. Not another guest to meet with a CVP. Tom. Tom who was supposed to go to the hotel.

Her phone rang again, the screen flashing the name of her contact at the car service. She lifted it to her ear, slowing her walk, “Allo?”

_“Lena, hi, listen, your pick up, he didn’t want to go to the hotel, he wanted to go to the office.”_

_“Yes, he’s here now.”_

_“OK good, just wanted to let you know.”_

_“You’ll send me driver details for the five-thirty?”_ she asked, since she already had him on the line _._

_“Yes, ten minutes.”_

_“Ok, thanks. I gotta go.”_

She blew a kiss at the receptionist as she walked by, but didn’t stop to chat, her attention fully on Tom. He turned just as she was about to put a hand on his shoulder to get his attention. He was wearing his glasses, and behind them there were bags under his eyes. He smiled, standing up, Lena’s head following him up to his full height. For a moment there was only one clear thought in her mind – _his eyes are so blue_.

“Hi,” he said, and the world snapped back into focus.

“Hi,” Lena answered. “You didn’t go to the hotel.”

“No,” he shrugged. “I hoped I could wait for you here.”

Lena nodded, running the rest of the CVP meeting schedule through her mind to see if her boss had any prospect of getting back to his office. Nope. “Sure,” she reached for Tom’s carry-on as he shouldered his backpack. He took it from her a moment later, their fingers brushing on the handle. “Do you want a coffee first?” Lena asked, motioning towards the small café to their far right.

“Please,” the desperation in Tom’s voice made Lena chuckle, and she changed their direction towards the café, which already had an afternoon-coffee-boost line about a dozen people deep.

Several of the people who walked by stopped to chat with Lena as they waited in line, a few merely glancing at Tom, one or two doing a double-take and looking confused for a few moments.

“ _You look like Loki_ _a little_ ” Adam from finance said in Hebrew, and Tom’s head titled at the sound of the familiar name.

“He said you kinda look like Loki,” Lena translated, trying not to grin too hard.

Tom chuckled, nodding, “I get that a lot.”

“Sorry I have to run,” Adam said in English, realising the guest with Lena didn’t speak Hebrew, “set me up some time with Nir.”

“Email me,” Lena said to his retreating back, but knew that he wouldn’t, and took out her phone to email a reminder to herself.

“I feel like I’m walking with a celebrity,” Tom said, grinning, when the elevator doors closed behind them, after yet another person stopped Lena on the way for a quick question.

Lena laughed, “isn’t it the other way around?”

“I prefer it this way,” the elevator doors opened with a quiet ding, and Lena led Tom down the hallway, pointing out the bathroom and kitchen area on their way to her manager’s office.

“You can wait here,” she said, motioning around the room. There was a small couch, Tom put his carry-on and backpack next to it. She closed the door, standing just inside, looking at him. “You shaved,” she said. Instead of the beard his chin was now glistening with golden stubble, no more than a day old.

Tom ran a hand over his chin, as if checking to make sure her statement was correct, “yes, I said goodbye to Robert.”

“It looks nice,” she wasn’t sure why she decided that his lack of beard is the appropriate topic of conversation. “Makes you look younger.”

He smiled, the wrinkles at the sides of his eyes growing deeper, his teeth flashing briefly, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Lena nodded, “it is.”

She caught a noise from outside, the sound of a door opening, rising volume of conversation. Shit. “I have to go, I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Tom nodded. They stared at each other for a few seconds before Lena took a breath and went back into the hallway, back to work.

It was just over an hour until it all ended. Lena caught glimpses of Tom in the hallway as she was running around, once he just watched her, leaning against the door frame of her manager’s office. Another time he was talking to someone from her team. Explaining something animatedly, with a smile, holding a paper cup from the kitchen between his long fingers.

Tom was sitting on the couch when she walked back into the office after having sent the CVP and entourage back to their hotel and confirmed with the car service their pickups at stupid-o’clock the following morning. She closed the door and leaned against it, throwing her head back and closing her eyes.

“Alright?” Tom asked.

“Yeah, they’re gone.”

“So you’ve finished?”

Lena nodded, straightening up, taking a breath, opening her eyes again to focus on the man in the couch. “Yes, we can go.”

They remained in their same exact positions, just looking at each other bleary-eyed. The ticking of the clock on the wall was the only sound breaking the silence. One of the lamps flickered for just a moment, and Lena thought she needs to open a ticket to the facility department to have it replaced. She knew she’d forget, though, and will only remember next time she came by. It didn’t matter.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said eventually, when the silence started grating on her nerves.

“Me too,” Tom said, pushing off the couch. He towered over her as he stood up, so close she could smell the faded scent of his perfume, the fresh, clean smell of his clothes.

She wasn’t thinking. She wasn’t thinking when she took the half-step that separated them, got on her tiptoes and put her arms around his neck. It wasn’t a conscious decision. It was just something that had to be done. The sun had to shine. Her heart had to beat. She had to hug Tom. His arms around her were almost crushing, wrapped tightly around her back, pulling her close. Her lips brushed his neck lightly, then she took a step back.

“Let’s go?” Lena asked.

Tom nodded, shouldering his backpack, grabbing the handle of his small suitcase. Lena picked up her own backpack, stuffed her laptop in – it lay untouched since lunchtime on her manager’s desk – and almost as an afterthought grabbed the shoulder bag that was resting on the chair.

“Let me,” Tom tried to take it away from her.

“It’s not mine,” Lena said. She held on to it, stepping out of the office with Tom in toe, and walking the few steps to the nearest conference room where her boss was just shutting off his laptop. She handed him the bag.

“ _I would’ve left without it_ ,” he said.

“ _I know_ ,” Lena smiled. “ _I’m off on Sunday, you remember_?”

“ _No. Remind me on Sunday_.”

The lobby of the Ritz looked like Lena had expected the lobby of the Ritz to look like, vast and rich, but she couldn’t help looking around. Partially it was to get a good look at the décor, and partially to see whether the CVP or anyone from his entourage happened to be around. They’d all stayed there as well, as it was one of the best hotels around, offered their company discount rates, and was a twenty minute _walk_ away from the office, and literally on the beach.

She stood next to Tom as he checked in, her hand now resting on her own small carry-on she’d brought in the trunk of her car, then followed him down a hallway to the elevators. Soft music played on their way up, and the soft carpets on the floor absorbed the noise of their footsteps and rolling suitcases as she followed him down another hallway to the door of the room.

“Holy fuck,” Lena mumbled when she walked into the room.

“They upgraded us,” Tom noted, looking around in satisfaction. It was a suite. They walked in through a small kitchen, to a living area, separated from the sleeping area by a wide panel supporting flat screen TVs on each side, and sliding door at each end of the panel to close the passage if needed. The bathroom seemed to be the size of Lena’s own bedroom. “What do you think?” Tom asked, dropping his backpack at the foot of the bed, putting his carry-on away in the closet.

“Holy fuck,” Lena repeated.

“Are you hungry? I’m famished. Should we go out to eat?” Tom towed Lena’s small suitcase to the closet and parked it next to his.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Are you alright?” He came to stand by Lena at the sliding glass doors to the balcony, she was looking at the boats in the marina. She nodded, turning towards him a little, tearing her eyes away from the glittering lights outside and focusing on the blue of his shirt. He was here, he flew in just to see her, just to talk to her. She’d managed to set that aside up until now. But now there was no more CVP, no more work, no more excuses.

“I’m so tired,” she whispered.

“Let’s sit for a bit,” Tom said, motioning towards the sofa, but instead of taking the few steps there, Lena just slid with her back to the glass door and sat on the carpet, tucking her legs to one side and adjusting her pencil skirt. It wasn’t her best idea, she realised as she pulled skirt down over her nude leggings. “Alright,” Tom chuckled, and sat down next to her, back to the wall, legs stretched in front of him.

“How was your day?” Tom asked.

“Exhausting,” Lena thought about it for a moment, then laid her head on his shoulder. It was hard and slightly uncomfortable. She kept her head there anyway. “I don’t even remember what I did this morning, do you believe it?”

She felt his body shake briefly, another chuckle, “I do, actually.” Tom reached for her hand, placed it on top of his, resting on his thigh. She stared for a moment, comparing her small hand to his big one, flattening her fingers against his. He could fold the tips of his fingers over hers, there was a full joint of difference in size.

“I think it went well,” she said into the air. “The visit. There were a few fuck ups but nothing big. I fixed them all.”

“Good.”

“How was your flight?”

Tom shrugged, “it was fine. Just a flight.”

Something he’d said earlier suddenly registered properly in Lena’s mind, and the realisation made her stomach turn in sympathy. Hungry. He was hungry, and she’d barely had anything to eat all day. “You’re hungry,” Lena said, pushing against his thigh to stand up. She took his hand to help him up. “Let’s go eat.”

She smoothed her skirt when he was upright, tucking her blouse properly in, settling her jacket on her shoulders properly.

“It suits you,” Tom said, gesturing at her.

“This?” Lena motioned towards her outfit. Tom nodded. “It’s my grown-up costume.”

“It suits you,” he said again, then took a step closer and whispered into her ear, “which is to say, you look fucking sexy.” The words, and his breath on her neck, ran shivers down her spine.

They ended up eating in the hotel restaurant, Lena being too tired to start thinking of alternatives, Tom being too hungry to care. Dinner conversation was slow at first, but it flowed easier as Lena made her way through a glass of wine. They spoke of Tom’s last Broadway show, of Lena’s triumphs and failures at work. They spoke of the weather, Lena telling Tom about how she ended up being stuck in traffic the previous week when the highway flooded. They caught up on just over a month of events, activities, and thoughts that hadn’t been shared.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Lena suggested when they were done with dinner, stuffed full.

It was easy finding their way to the beach. They stepped off the main path and walked down into the darkness and the sand, holding onto each other for balance as they made their way through the soft to the hard-packed sand. The light from nearby restaurants, from the windows of the hotel, from the street lights some distance away and from the stars and moon was just enough to make sure they didn’t walk in pitch darkness. The sea was noisy beside them, waves rolling dangerously close to their feet.

Tom’s hand stayed wrapped around Lena’s as they walked. Lena didn’t mind, didn’t try to take her hand away. It felt natural. It was warm in the cold night.

“You wanted to talk,” she said, not sure where the bravery to breach the topic came from. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe it was the fact that living in the unknown was going to drive her insane.

“Yes,” his hand squeezed hers a little, reassuring. “Listen,” he said, “my job takes me all over the world, for weeks or months at a time. I’m only able to plan my life in small increments, and even that changes. So when I told you that I want to take things as they come, all I meant is I don’t know what tomorrow brings, and I didn’t want to make promises I couldn’t keep.”

“So what’s different?” Lena asked. “Why did you come all this way to say this?”

“Because I still want to be with you. You called me and called the whole thing off, and I thought that’s what you wanted… but then it became clear to me that it wasn’t.”

The dreams. The goddamn dreams.

“So I came here to ask you again,” Tom said, stopping and turning towards her. It was dark, but he was so close she could still see his eyes, “what do you want, Lena?”

Lena pulled at his hand to start walking again. The waves roared at their left, almost loud enough to drown out the panic in her thoughts. What did she want? Such a simple question, really. Why was it that it stopped Lena in her tracks, at least metaphorically, and brought the panic back? Tom stretched the fingers of the hand that was holding hers and Lena realized she’d been squeezing his hand too tight.

It was a simple question, and once Lena got over the panic, she found that the answer was simple as well. Scary, yes. But simple. “I want you,” she said.

Tom moved closer, until their bodies were touching, “you have me,” he said.

“No,” she shook her head. “No,” it took her another moment to form into words the thoughts scattering through her mind. “I don’t want you here, now. I want you no matter where you are, or who you’re with, or how long it’s been since we’ve seen each other.” She took a breath. “I don’t want to be a call girl. Someone who signed an NDA so you can call up when you’re lonely without worrying about it. I don’t want to be your dirty little secret.”

“You’re not,” Tom said. “That was never my intention.”

“Good, because it would be fucking expensive to fly me out each time you’re bored,” Lena said, trying to lighten the mood.

Tom stopped and turned to face the ocean, turning Lena with him. He pulled her under his arm, still holding on to her hand, until she was trapped in front of him, then brought his other hand around her, holding her close. They watched the dark waters shimmering with the reflecting light of the stars and moon. “You have me,” he said. “Wherever I am and whoever I’m with.”

“Why?” the question escaped before Lena could catch it.

“What do you mean, why?” Tom let go, tugging her towards him, no longer offering her the relief of the ocean to distract her from her own self.

Lena turned, but didn’t dare look up. “I’m just a scared little girl, why would you want that?”

Tom tilted his head, studying her. “Sit with me,” he said, sitting down on the sand. It was wet and cold. “Scared little girl?” he asked. Lena nodded. It’s who she’s always been. “So a scared little girl successfully manages the lives of two executives and just finished mastering a week-long CVP visit with nothing but minor glitches? I watched you today, Lena. You were amazing.”

“Can’t I be both?” Lena asked. “I think I’m both.”

“I think it’s easy for you to think you’re a scared little girl. Makes it easier to run and hide.”

She shrugged, he wasn’t wrong.

“You’re not my dirty little secret,” Tom pivoted, addressing another thing she’d said. “Don’t ever think that. Not for a second.”

“This is the first time you’re touching me in public,” Lena said, lifting their entwined hands. In the dark, where there was no one to see. She left that part unsaid.

“I’m trying to protect you.”

“Can you protect me a little less?”

“We can talk about it,” he said, pulling her closer to him. Lena put her hand under his coat, wrapping it around his back, resting her head on his shoulder. They sat watching the waves crash against the shore, the water coming in closer and closer to where they were sitting. It wouldn’t be long before it would touch first Tom’s shoes, then Lena’s.

“Tom?” Lena asked after a while.

“Hmm…?”

“Can I kiss you?”

He smiled, turned his head to her, “always.”


	14. A Toi (to you)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title song:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwiPiQFqD-U
> 
> Also, I don't know where I'm going with this, seriously.  
> But I already know what Lena's getting Tom for Christmas so at least I've got that going for me.

“So what does it mean?” Lena asked, curled on the sofa, wet hair drying in ringlets around her face, tucked into a white hotel robe, her fingers wrapped around a steaming mug of tea. Earl Grey that she’d brought from home.

“Hmm?” Tom looked at her, cocking his head to the side.

“What we said earlier. What does it mean?” Lena tried to clarify the question, “about us.”

“I don’t understand,” he said, shifting in his seat to turn towards her. His own white robe fell open, revealing the white of his chest, a few hairs glinting in the pale lamplight.

“Am I your girlfriend?” she felt like she was twelve, asking the question. The way his eyebrows shot up and his eyes sparkled with amusement just made that feeling worse. He tried not to laugh, though, and she appreciated that. “I don’t…” she started, took a breath, “I’m not good at these things. I just want to know what to expect. I want to make sure we’re on the same page. If we’re not you have to tell me.”

“Lena,” he reached a hand, folded his fingers around hers. The mug was shaking in her hands until he stilled the motion. “We’re on the same page. Together, however you want to call it. Personally, I prefer partner.”

“In crime?”

He laughed, “among other things. Have you got any crime planned?”

Lena shrugged. “I like partner.”

For a change, Lena slept like the dead. All through the night and until the early morning, when she woke up to the shifting of the bed as Tom got out of it. She meant to ask him where he was going, coherently, but all she managed was a questioning grunt.

“I’m off for a run,” he said, walking around the bed and leaning down to kiss her forehead, “I’ll be back soon. Sleep.”

Sleep didn’t happen. Lena rolled in the bed for a bit, then gave up on the notion entirely and got up, wrapped herself back in the robe. She pulled the curtains open and slid the glass door to the side to step out onto the balcony. The cold air helped her focus her fuzzy mind, and she watched the waves crash on the shore, the few people out on walks, the few people out for runs. A shape caught her eye, moving away down the beach. It was the hair blowing in the wind that made her certain it was Tom.

“You run _fast_ ,” she announced when he was back in the room, sweat glistening on every visible piece of skin.

“Oh?” he toed off his running shoes in the doorway.

“I saw you,” Lena motioned to the balcony.

“Oh,” he laughed, taking his black t-shirt off, showing sweat glistening on new bits of skin. “I’m popping in the shower, breakfast after?”

Lena nodded, eyes stalling on his chest for longer than was strictly necessary.

She changed from her oversized t-shirt and shorts into a pair of thick jeans and a stripy sweater on top of a tank top, for extra layers. Tom put on the same pair of jeans he’d had on yesterday and a blue sweater identical to the one he’d had on before.

“You look like a French painter,” Tom pointed out, “all you need is a beret.”

“Is that good or bad?” Lena asked, looking down at herself. He was right. With the scarf she’d added to her outfit, she was one step away from a caricature.

“It’s sexy,” he said.

She followed him out the door and down the corridor to the elevator, leaned against him as the door closed on the two of them alone. Tom wrapped his hands around her middle, pulling her close, leaning down to rest his face next to her. “You smell nice,” he mumbled, tracing his nose down the side of her face, then following the same path with his mouth.

“You too,” Lena said, then lost all coherent train of thought.

She stepped in front of him when the elevator door opened, moving away. It wasn’t two steps down the hall before his hand found hers, pulling her back closer to him. She looked at his fingers wrapped around hers, then up at him. Tom smiled a little, squeezing her fingers just a bit. Something inside Lena’s stomach dropped, then flipped, but she managed to keep her face straight and walk alongside him to the end of the hall, then turn right towards the restaurant for breakfast.

He didn’t let go of her hand until they were seated at a small table by the window, overlooking the marina. There were glimpses of sky showing between the grey clouds that were floating in above the sea. They were the exact blue of Tom’s eyes.

The text came through when they were already in the hallway, ready to start a day of exploring the country. Lena opened it and stopped in her tracks, “Tom?”

“Hmm?” he stopped and turned towards her.

“My friend’s inviting me to dinner,” she swallowed, hoped the sudden knot in her stomach would dissolve with the moisture, “do you want to come? She always makes great food.”

“Of course,” he smiled.

“Okay,” she texted back and they continued down the hall to the elevator.

They were halfway to her car in the parking lot when Lena stopped in her tracks again. Tom’s hand found the small of her back, rested there, “everything okay?”

Lena nodded, “I’m just thinking. My friend lives pretty close to me. It makes no sense to come back here after. Do you want to just come to my place?”

“Sure,” Tom said, “whatever makes sense.”

“Okay,” another nod, as thoughts were forming, ideas brought up and discarded. “So new plan. We check out. We go to Caesarea because it’s on the way. Then we can go to Akko if you want. Then we’ll pick up Sunny from my mom’s and get her home, put our bags, go to dinner.”

“Sounds good,” Tom agreed, turning her back towards the elevators back to their rooms.

“I’ve made a terrible mistake,” Lena announced as they were driving up Route 2 towards Caesarea.

“What?”

“I didn’t take a bath. I don’t have a bathtub at home. I should’ve taken a bath.” The hotel had a huge bathtub. Gone, now. Left behind with in the matching huge suite, with the comfortable huge bed.

Tom laughed, “we can always go back.”

The parking lot outside of the national park was remarkably full for a late Friday morning in mid-winter. Lena took a few minutes to find a spot. Tom put on his baseball cap and sunglasses, even though some clouds were rolling in. Lena put on her black woollen hat, but the sunglasses were left in her bag. She paid for their entrance tickets and led the way.

It’s been years since she’d been to Caesarea, but the old ruins still made her as giddy as the first time she’d seen them. There was a tour group gathered in the entrance hall, the guide explaining something about the history of the place in Hebrew. Lena and Tom stood off to the side, listening in as Lena translated the highlights quietly.

They walked off the main path almost immediately, Lena cutting left to show Tom the arches that were on the cover of the Lonely Planet guide. He took photos. Of the arches. Of Lena. Of the two of them together. After exploring everything off the path, they went back to it, going through the little tourist-trap area of small shops and big restaurants, then through the gate to the proper historic site of the old city.

They were greeted with the sight of waves crashing against the old pier, they air heavy with salty spray. On their left, the ruins of the old city spread in earnest. They spent a few hours going through everything. They sat on the rocks of an old public house, imagining themselves drinking beer. They’ve climbed through rocks to stand on top of the ruins and look around at the sea and land spreading around them. They walked around the baths, taking photos of the mosaic work on the floor. They walked the length of the pier until they’ve reached the Hippodrome, where they climbed to the top of the seating area, wind throwing Lena’s hair into her face, almost blowing Tom’s cap off. Then they made their way down and onward to the amphitheatre at the end.

“No body,” Lena announced, having peeked into a sarcophagus that was lying around, set there entirely decoratively.

“Did you expect one?” Tom asked.

Lena shrugged “what’s the point of a grave without a body?” Sarcophagus should come with bodies, that made them cooler.

It started raining on their way back through the park. At first they walked on at the same pace, but as the rain grew steadily heavier, their pace grew faster, until Lena had to almost run to catch up with Tom’s long strides.

They caught shelter in the little shopping area near the entrance to the park, hidden under the building’s extended roof. It was mostly there to provide shade in the summer, but it served just as well to hide from the rain.

“Do you want to get some lunch?” Tom asked, motioning towards the restaurant across the path from where they were standing.

“I guess,” Lena said. The rain has turned from individual drops falling faster and faster, to what seemed like a gigantic bucket being turned over the land.

“Should we make a run for it?” it was barely a hundred meters from where they were standing to the entrance to the nearest restaurant.

Lena took a step towards the edge of their protective rooftop and peeked up at the sky. They were right under the heaviest of the clouds, grey as dark as the asphalt they were standing on. “No,” she said. “Let’s wait a few minutes.”

She didn’t realise that she’d been shivering until Tom put his arms around her, pulling her close. They’d both left their coats in the car. Tom, because he wasn’t cold. Lena, because she was an idiot. Now he stood with his front against her back, arms wrapped around her chest. They watched the rain as downpour turned to hail, then back to downpour, and a few minutes later slowed to something close to regular rain.

“I think we should go now,” Tom said. He looked around, behind them, then said, “wait right here.” Lena watched him disappear into one of the gift shops and come out a few minutes later carrying a brand new umbrella.

“Smart,” Lena remarked.

“Not smart enough to think about it earlier,” he opened the umbrella and they huddled underneath it, walking quickly towards the restaurant.

“It wouldn’t helped earlier, not with that wind.” Lena had several umbrellas at home. It was remarkable how little they actually got used. It was either not worth it because the rain wasn’t strong enough and she could just run to the car, or it was not worth it because the wind was too strong and the umbrella would be rendered useless. She only used them when walking her dog.

The Nickleback song played in full volume, the rain pelting on the car windshield adding another layer to the rhythm of the music. Tom reached for the volume toggle, only to have his hand slapped away, “don’t you dare.”

“Seriously?” he laughed, incredulous.

“Driver picks the music,” Lena said. The second part of that sentence stayed inside her head. She was certain he wouldn’t get the reference anyway, and she’d just sound either mean or stupid. Another vehicle cut her off, causing Lena to hit the brake a little too hard.

“Fuck,” Tom mumbled, “that’s the third time.”

“Just that kind of day,” Lena shrugged. Some days she had a smooth ride, other days, it seemed like everyone on the road were trying to kill her. Other days happened more often. “When I just started driving, the first time I realised I’m driving and not terrified was the day I got scared that I’m going to die because I’m not scared enough.”

“That…” his voice trailed off as Lena switched lanes to let a psycho going way too fast in the rain rush past her. “Disturbingly, makes a lot of sense,” he finished, eyes locked on the retreating red taillights of the offending vehicle.

The song changed to a Queen song, and Tom’s mood changed instantly. The singalong was inevitable. Lena was glad there was something on her driving playlist that was to his liking. Up until that point he’d been on the scale of confused to slightly appalled at her musical taste. She had tried to explain it was just her driving playlist, created specifically with the purpose of keeping her happy and singing on the road. She even thought he believed her, until Creep came on at some point, which was pretty far from happy, although they did sing along.

The rain didn’t let up the entire time they were on the Beach Road, the wind occasionally beating the car with such force, Lena was amazed it even stayed on course.

“So, new plan?” she suggested.

“Go home?” Tom asked.

“Pick up Sunny first,” Lena said. She missed her dog. It was a strange thing. More often than not, the black mutt seemed like a chore. She needed get up early in the morning to walk with her. She needed to do it again in the evening, even when she couldn’t be bothered to move. Rain or shine, always. But then the dog would look at her, and that’s all it took. It was all worth it.

The song changed, an old melody, and a man started singing in French. Lena sang along, skipping parts, singing others with precision.

“You speak French?” Tom asked.

“No,” Lena laughed, “ne parle Francais.”

“So you have no idea what you’re singing?”

“I understand a bit,” she waited for the chorus of the song to start, and translated along, “to life, to love,” she said, “and in the end he says you and me.”

“To the life, to the love, to our nights to our days, to the eternal return of chance,” Tom supplied the translation.

“Pretty,” Lena said. “Can you translate the rest?” she restarted the song, and as Joe Dassin sang, Tom translated.

Lena unlocked the door to her apartment, Sunny’s lead wrapped around her wrist, Tom panting behind her, a carry-on in each hand. She lived on the 4th floor of the building, and there was no elevator. She was panting a bit herself. When she was a kid, their entire family somehow ended up living on the 4th floors of various buildings, all without elevators. She’d run up and down those stairs multiple times each day without losing breath. She was no longer a kid, and those 84 steps up were taking their toll.

There was a pair of black sneakers discarded right on the inside of the door, and a set of keys that contained far more key-holders than actual keys, hung on a peg that was usually empty.

“My sister is home,” Lena said. She had not counted on that. She was pretty sure Anat hadn’t counted on Lena being home that weekend as well.

“Anat!” she yelled, unbuckling the leash from Sunny’s collar and setting the dog free. She stepped aside to let Tom in.

“ _Whaaaat_?” came from deeper inside the apartment, then, a moment later, “ _what are you doing home?_ ”

“ _I live here_ ,” Lena said, no longer yelling, but speaking loudly enough to be heard. “ _I have a guest_.” She was glad it wasn’t summer, and she didn’t have to warn her sister to be decent. December guaranteed that the girl was wrapped up in fluffy pyjamas at all times.

“Did she just call you ma?” Tom asked.

Lena shook her head, “Ma means what in Hebrew,”

“Oh. So what does _Ma kore_ mean?” Tom repeated a phrase he’d heard said to Lena yesterday several times as they were walking together in her office.

“Literally what’s happening, but people meaning as what’s up,” Lena explain. Tom nodded his understanding.

“Shoes off?” he asked, noticing that Lena had zipped down her boots and was stepping out of them. Lena nodded.

A minute later, Tom was already studying her bookshelves, looking at the titles. The living room was where she kept most of her books, but there was another set of shelves in her bedroom, where her favourites lived. He picked a tattered old copy of a Shakespeare book she’d once bought at Portobello market. 100 year old copy of Taming of the Shrew. She’d never read it, just left it on the shelf, caressing the spine occasionally. Tom leafed through the book, bringing the pages to his nose to sniff.

“Should I leave you two alone?” Lena asked. Tom nodded, not even turning, long fingers hovering over the page he was reading.

She popped their suitcases into her bedroom, crossed the hallway, knocked, and put her head through the door into her sister’s room, updating her that the guest was male, that they were going to rest then go out for dinner. Anat nodded, barely turning her head from the RPG she was playing on her laptop. A pile of notes and books was scattered over her bed, indicating that at some point she’d been studying.

Tom found her lying diagonally on the bed, having changed into pyjamas, staring at the ceiling. Sunny looked up when the man entered the room, got up and accepted the treat he picked up from the bowl on the dresser and offered her. The dog watched him as he closed the door, took off his jeans and placed them on the chair by the dresser that held a pile of Lena’s clothes, and laid down on the bed beside her, his feet planted firmly on the floor. He shifted his head, looking around the room. He focused on the shelves, two over the dresser, three more on the opposite wall. He had to twist his head in an awkward angle to look there.

Tom smiled, shifting on the bed and wrapping himself around Lena, pulling her close to his chest, “I like your books,” he said.


	15. Sunday Morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this has certainly taken me long enough.  
> Title song - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=892Z6nvxwvs&ab_channel=Nintendogsmaster3

Lena startled awake. The room was dark and quiet, filled only with the sounds of breathing. A dog’s, in a dog bed against the wall on the other side of the bed. Hers, louder in her ears than it probably was. Tom’s, louder in her ears than even her own breath, the sound of it a vibration she felt through her whole body, the force of it tickling the back of her neck. She reached for her phone, turned on the display and squinted. It was only five thirty. There was still time. She rolled in the arms that held her, burrowed her nose into the man’s chest.

“You awake then?” he asked, the quiet words ruffling the hair on top of her head.

“Sorry, did I wake you?”

“No. When do we need to go?”

“An hour, but I need to take Sunny out first.”

“I’ll go with you.”

They walked side by side, wandering between patches of darkness and pools of light. Sunny walked to one side, occasionally pulling the leash this way and that as she wanted to go off exploring something unseen in the darkness. Tom walked on Lena’s other side, matching his pace to hers, holding her hand in his. His eyes were darting around, his hand stiff around Lena’s finger.

Lena bumped him with the side of her body, bringing his attention to her, “relax,” she said, wiggling her fingers a little bit. Tom loosened his hold. “They have no idea who you are.”

She was right, of course. Despite growing up feeling her area of residence was a big place, it was a small town in the middle of nowhere. Sure, there were those who would recognize Tom if they’d noticed him, even here. But they wouldn’t notice, because who in their right mind would ever imagine him being there, of all the places in the whole wide world.

“Sorry,” Tom said.

“Don’t be sorry, just relax.”

The evening was surreal in how normal it was. They drove to dinner, played with two toddlers as the final preparations of food were made. Lena helped set the table while Tom was making her friend’s 2-year-old and 5-year-old shriek with joy as they hung like monkeys off his arms, lifting them up and swirling around. Lena spiked her coffee with a shot of Baileys from the shelf as Tom sipped from a tumbler of whiskey that was handed to him. Plans were made for an impromptu trip to the Golan Heights the following day, to see if they could catch some snow. The forecast was in their favor.

They left close to midnight, bursting with food, Tom slightly buzzed from the alcohol. Lena drove them home to the soundtrack of her randomized playlist, Tom’s hand resting just above her knee the whole way. She wished he’d say something. Anything. Anything that would make the ticking clock in her head grow quiet. Just two more days. They were always on borrowed time, it seemed. Lena could feel him watching her, but he remained quiet, and all the words she had got stuck in her throat.

“I’m gonna take Sunny out for a few minutes, so that we can sleep in,” Lena said as she strapped the leash to the dog’s collar, moments after they’d walked through the door.

When she came back home, his shoes were in the row by the door. She let Sunny off the leash and stood in place, staring at them. She took off her own shoes, put them next to his. It seemed so odd. Men’s shoes in her apartment. Men’s shoes next to hers. When was the last time she’d seen that? Has that ever really happened? She pulled the phone from her pocket and snapped a photo of the two pairs.

She replaced the water in Sunny’s bowl in the kitchen, topped off her food. Washed the dishes her sister has left in the sink. She folded the throw blanket in the living room, straightened the little coffee table, made sure the glass door to the balcony was locked. When she went into the room, Tom wasn’t there. It took her a moment to realize the water running in the shower must be him, and not her sister Anat like she’d assumed. Lena took the cover off the bed, folding it and dropping it on the chair. She took out clean underwear, an oversized t-shirt, her fluffy socks. She unpacked her little carry-on and put things back into their place. She turned on the bedside lamps, shutting off the main light of the room. Then, having run out of things to do, she sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the black carry-on that wasn’t hers.

That’s how Tom found her when he stepped out of the bathroom a few minutes later. He leaned against the doorframe; she could tell he was looking at her. She counted three breaths, then on the fourth tore her gaze away from the suitcase and looked up at Tom, forcing a smile. The curves of his mouth lifted in response, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and her smile turned real. Lena shook her head, trying to shake off the gloom that clouded her mind.

“You alright?”

She nodded, getting up and picking up her folded pile of sleepwear, pressing it against her chest with a hand so it doesn’t fall to the floor. She got on her tiptoes as she passed by Tom, balancing with a hand on his stomach, and kissed him on the cheek. The smile on his face grew wider.

“Want some company?” he spoke directly into her ear.

Lena chuckled, “maybe tomorrow.”

“mmm I’ll hold you to that.”

Lena didn’t cry in the shower. Not really. The tears gathered in her throat, choking her, but never came out. She took deep breaths, swallowing until the lump in her throat was gone. She stood under the stream of hot water until it started turning cold. She went through her nighttime routine, the familiarity of it easing her mind.

“You smell absolutely divine,” Tom said, nuzzling the crook of her neck.

“So do you,” Lena chuckled, realizing he smelled like her own soap. She snuggled closer, and they lay entwined, breathing each other in. “I don’t want you to go,” she said after some time. Tom hadn’t moved in a while, and she thought he might be asleep, although a part of her hoped he wasn’t.

“I know,” Tom said. “I don’t want to go.”

“But you will,” it wasn’t a question.

“But I will,” he agreed.

“I hate this,” Lena said. Tom didn’t say anything back, just tightened his hold on her.

The sound of the alarm was the most unwelcome sound in the whole known universe. Potentially in the unknown one, too. Lena cursed, rolling over to shut it off. Making plans for today has clearly been her worst idea ever. She wondered if anyone would mind if she cancelled. Then she rolled over to her other side, where Tom was waking up.

“Why,” he said, holding one of her fluffy socks in his hand, “am I covered in socks?”

He looked so confused Lena burst out laughing. She took the sock out of his hand, still laughing, and dug up another one that was trapped under his thigh. Laughing all the while. She couldn’t stop.

“I’m sorry,” Lena said, folding the socks into each other and throwing them onto the chair. She missed. “I think I took them off in my sleep.”

“Evidently,” Tom ran a hand through his hair, then rubbed his eyes.

“That side of the bed is usually empty,” she felt the need to explain further. She should have said always but couldn’t quite bring herself to admit it. Usually was close enough.

He chuckled, “my fault then.”

He joined her for the morning walk with the dog, then hovered around the kitchen while Lena put on the kettle and took out a box of biscuits. “We’ll stop for breakfast on the way,” she said by way of explanation.

Tom took one look at Lena’s jar of instant coffee and opted for tea instead, “there’ll be proper coffee there, right?”

Lena shrugged, “one can only hope.”

“One certainly does.”

She dressed warm, thickly lined leggings, tank top, thick sweater, her Columbia coat. Hat and scarf. She briefly considered gloves, but figured her pockets should do.

“Are we going to the north pole?” Tom inquired, quirking an amused eyebrow at her. He wore the same grey jeans, the same blue sweater, his black pea coat.

“To the mountains,” Lena said, “which is close enough for me.”

His hand on the small of her back as they walked to her car was distracting, still unusual. She imagined she could feel his warmth seeping through her layers and to her skin. The hand slid around her waist, pulling her closer as they neared the car, and he planted a kiss on her temple before he walked around the car to the passenger door.

She could get used to this, Lena thought as she sat down, keyed in the code, started the car. Worse, she realized, she already was. It took so very little time to happen.

It took another minute to set up the phone in its cradle, turn on the music, and text her friend that they were on their way. Then Lena put the car in drive, and they were off.

It was a fun day. Despite the fact Lena didn’t really feel like leaving the house in the morning, in the end it had all been for the best. Their breakfast spot was a small café at a gas station, that boasted a view of the Sea of Galilee from its back terrace. They sat inside drinking coffee and pastries, then walked around outside, enjoying the view. Tom took a bunch of photos of the view, a selfie of himself with the backdrop of the lake, then pulled Lena to his side for a photo of both of them together. They made a stop by the old bridge over the Jordan river, just to walk around and snap some photos, then drove up serpentine roads to the top of one of the mountains.

It was a short hike to the very top, where they walked around the perimeter, listening to her friend’s husband explaining history to their 5-year-old son. Lena translated to English for Tom’s benefit. In the distance to one side there was the border with Syria, the demilitarized zone clearly visible. They walked over the trenches of the old military outpost that was set up on top of the mountain, and Lena bent down to take a photo of a small patch of snow, no bigger than her own hand in size, that was tucked by a rock. Evidence it had snowed at night.

Tom followed her, looking around with interest, listening to the stories, enjoying the view. His ears, cheeks and nose flushed with the cold; the neck of his pea-coat turned upwards to block the harsh wind.

“Brrr…” he said, stepping closer to Lena, sticking his hands into her pockets, even though he had his own. Cold hands wrapped around her warm ones and she nearly shrieked at the contact, immediately taking her hands out of her pockets. The shaking of his body behind her told her he was laughing.

“You laughed at me,” she pointed out, not turning.

“Not laughing now,” he said, body still shaking, which made Lena choke on her own laughter for a moment. No, not laughing at all… she pulled his hands out of her pockets, un-trapping herself, and turned in his arms.

“Hey!” he feigned insult, put his hands back into his own pockets. Lena reached up, wrapping her warm palms around his ears, and rubbed a bit for warmth. “Oh,” he smiled, “thank you.”

“We can get you a hat,” she said, nodding towards the gift-shop-café building that stood not far away. Someone had cleverly named it Coffee Anan, a joke only a Hebrew speaker would get.

“Nah, I can make it,” Tom assured her, bringing her right palm from his ears, over the stubble on his cheek and to his mouth, where he kissed it. “I could do with a hot drink, though.” He kept her hand in his as they walked to the café.

After that it was an impromptu drive to the Banias Falls, where Lena, Tom, her friend Natalie and the 5-year-old Golan (named after the same mountain range they’d been exploring) took a short hike through the trail, while Natalie’s husband and 2-year-old stayed in the car. The toddler had fallen asleep, and the husband volunteered to stay in the car. Lena was absolutely sure he’d used the opportunity to nap as well.

Late lunch was had in a fish restaurant surrounded by little creeks that joined the river Dan further down the line. By the time it was over, Lena was ready for her own nap. She downed a double espresso with enough sugar to give her diabetes, before they’d left.

“You sure you’re ok to drive?” Tom asked, as she settled behind the wheel and tapped ‘home’ on her navigation app.

Lena nodded. It wasn’t the first time she drove tired, and it won’t be the last.

“Did you have a nice day?” she asked.

“I had a lovely day,” Tom assured her, “your country is beautiful.”

Lena glanced out the window to the fields on her left. The green grass shimmered in the light of the setting sun. It was pretty, and not even the prettiest thing they’d seen that day. It was easy to forget, being mostly confined to the views of Route 4 and the path she’d walked with Sunny. It was easy to forget, seeing the country mostly through the news, knowing how everything was a bit shit. It was so easy to forget. But he was right. It was a beautiful country. And they’d seen so very little.

“There’s so much more to see,” Lena said, “the Dead Sea, Masada, Jerusalem, Akko, there’s a crater in the desert,” she tried to think where else she’d been on her school trips. She hasn’t really been out and about her own country outside of that. Not really. “Nazareth,” she said, “The grottos at Rosh Hanikra… maybe we can try to see a bit tomorrow.”

“Let’s just stay in tomorrow,” Tom suggested, his hand that’s been resting on her thigh until now, squeezing a little. “You’ll show me more next time I visit.”

“Okay,” was it bad that she was relieved she didn’t have to go anywhere? It wasn’t, right?

The road stretched ahead of them, traffic moving at a fast, steady pace. The number of cars suggested that soon enough that pace was going to slow, but for now Lena was grateful. They still had an hour’s worth of drive in front of them as it was, she hoped they’d manage to make it without too much of a stall.

They’d finally turned, the setting sun blissfully moving to Lena’s side, when Tom spoke again, “you should come for Christmas.” The words hung in the air for a few seconds until he spoke again, “I think you’d love the village where my mum lives. There’s lots of little hikes around.”

“Christmas?” Lena asked.

“Mmhmm,” he paused for a moment, “if you can get away from work?”

Lena swallowed, “isn’t Christmas a family holiday?”

“Oh yes, we’re all going to my mum’s house for a couple of days, my sisters will be there as well.”

“They’ll hate me,” she blurted it out before her brain could stop her.

“They will not!”

“I’m a rude Israeli, they’ll absolutely hate me,” she assured him. She wanted to come; she really did. It was time spent with Tom, something to look forward to. It was a confirmation that he wanted her around. He even wanted to introduce her to his family. But the thought of them hating her terrified her. And that not even considering work and how it all worked into this. “What about New Year’s?” she asked.

“What about it?”

“Is it also at your mom’s house?”

“No, I’m planned to be back in London already.”

“My boss has some customer meetings in London just after New Year’s,” Lena said, suddenly more grateful than ever for her manager’s upcoming business trip schedule, “I was planned to go with him anyway. I could come in a bit early, work remote. It would make more sense than going back and forth.”

“I have to fly to Atlanta on the 8th,” He said. “Or the 9th, I can’t remember. Have to ask Luke.”

“I can stay until you have to,” Lena offered. “If that works? I think it works with the customer meetings anyway.”

They’ve hit the first stall of the heavy traffic, a red light somewhere down the line of standing cars. Lena glanced at her phone to see how long the delay was. 7 minutes of traffic, no change to their arrival time. Small miracles.

“New Year’s it is,” Tom said. “I can’t wait.”

Lena made sure her foot was set heavily on the brake before she turned to him, “me neither.”

Solid plans. Solid plans for just a few weeks away. The ticking clock in her mind settled, and she could breathe easier. A small part of her mind was already panicking about what would happen after that, once Tom had to go to Atlanta. She stomped on it and boxed it in a dark corner of her mind. Later. She’d have time to wallow over that later. Right now, she had to drive them both safely home, and then spend the day with him tomorrow, and pass the few weeks until she could see him again. Just a few weeks. She’d made it through so, so much worse. This one was easy.


End file.
